


Theoretically

by sarahlorien



Series: Provocative [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Humour, Maths-Chemistry student, Romance, Text messaging, Theories, art student
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-14 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7187891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahlorien/pseuds/sarahlorien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Of course it’s maths based. Everything is maths based.” Michael’s sure that if she wasn’t so drunk she’d be scowling or rolling her eyes or—being blatantly rude. “How drunk you are is even based on maths. How cool is that?” He exasperates, eyes bright as he follows her into her dorm while she tucks her key back into her pocket.</em>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <em>Sarah flops back on her bed, tired and drunk. “That’s so not right. It’s like... perspective and shit, umm... looking at things and thinking... about art?” Even she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.</em>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <em>“What?” His smile is lazy and slightly confused as he sits down on the bed next to her, she’s staring interestedly at the ceiling but he’s looking at her. She’s all soft edges and sharp attitude and warm feelings with cold outlooks.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Theoretically

Michael Clifford can _almost_ pinpoint the moment it all goes to hell.

He’s standing in line for coffee and Luke’s arguing about cognitive processes (the psychology nerd he is). His point is that cognitive processes are the most important aspect of thinking and mental state. Michael argues back that maths, damn _maths_ is more important than whatever the hell Luke was talking about.

“Maths is a concrete and analytical tool that is used in everyday life and an _absolute necessity_ when it comes to mental processes.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” There is so much sass coming from the girl behind them that Michael can’t help but turn and look. The girl behind them is in a horrendously mismatched scarf to the rest of her outfit, already with coffee in hand and a smudge of... _something_ , on her right cheek close to her jaw.

He thinks to ignore her, but her eyebrows are pulled together, she’s tight-lipped and staring at him with green eyes bright— _pretty_ , he thinks, faintly—but she’s staring at him incredulously and she wants to wipe that inquisitive look off his face because goddamn it, maths isn’t everything. “Did you just say that maths is an absolute necessity?” Her mouth hangs open a fraction and she doesn’t care what she looks like, she just can’t—he’s just so—and like—he’s just so _wrong_. “How?” She snaps.

The boy shuts his eyes believing he’s talking to an idiot of sorts and when he reopens them he’s still faced with half a scowl and the other half suspicious. “It follows a specific process which contains proofs and can be reviewed at a later stage to conclude with the same answer.” His explanation makes complete sense of course ( _of course_ ), but this girl still looks none the happier.

“No wonder evolution’s slowed.” She mutters to herself, rolling her eyes even though Michael’s almost sure she’s talking to her coffee.

“Pardon?” His curt words set Luke on edge, but he does nothing to stop the scene from unravelling. 

The brunette clears her throat and smiles at him as if she has a point to prove (or even just a point—he hides his scoff), but he’s too interested in what she’s going to say to follow along with her niceties. “If you always have the same answer, nothing ever happens. It doesn’t change; it doesn’t evolve.”

He frowns as the line moves forward, Luke now also very invested in what’s going to happen. He doesn’t care about the outcome too much, being a Psychology student, but the way neither of them give up intrigues him a lot. 

“Who are you to second-guess me anyway? Some archeologist attempting to tell me that evolution is real? Well guess what sweetheart, I know it. I believe it too.”

The girl almost laughs. Almost. Then she rolls her eyes and has another mouthful of coffee before answering. “ _Some_ archeologist huh? I wish. But no. I’m an Art student.”

Michael hesitates. An Art student? Guessing him wrong? No way, this is not happening. Art Students are those prissy people who walk around with too much in their folios and have paintbrushes stuck in their hair, not the girl who stands behind him in line for coffee striking up a vicious conversation. He can’t just let her win him over because he is too stunned that she is... her. Michael narrows his eyes at her instead and juts his chin out to her as he speaks. “But tell me, do you purposely splash blue paint on your face to make it more obvious that you’re an Art student?” 

His laughter bubbles when her hands frantically crawl over her face to find the dirty mark, embarrassed and now a shade of pink he thought only appeared during sunburn.

Luke eases her flailing by pointing out where the mark is and she rubs it off vigorously and then scowls at Michael. “You’re avoiding the point.” She says through clenched teeth, absolutely having enough of this _asshole_ who won’t move even though it’s his turn to order coffee. Thank god she’d got in line, because she’d just finished the coffee in her hand. 

“Nope. Just bringing up a new one.” He’s too... perky and he hasn’t even had a coffee yet. And he’s vile and somehow manipulative, but she’s yet to figure that one out. So she settles on seething until he’s ordered his coffee, him making sure to add in plenty of ‘umm’s and ‘ah’s. 

But as soon as he’s done being an imbecile in line, he turns and continues talking to her like she has nothing better to do. So she only asks for a black coffee to-go because she doesn’t have time for this, and his continuous bickering and asking stupid questions about what _she_ has to do with their conversation and pointing out that it’s rude for her to interrupt other people _and_ listen in on their discussion.

And finally she turns around with her steaming cup of coffee and of course she contemplates throwing it at him, but she can’t be held responsible for her actions without more coffee so instead she cuts him off (much to his annoyance) again, stating. “Not everything is about fucking maths, so listen to your damn psychology friend over there and then fuck off.” And most of the people in line for coffee are now as keenly interested in what’s going down at Luke is, some pretend not to hear (but how can they not?) and the few left act appalled.

Michael is so taken back by her attitude that he forgets to say something witty back at her and watches as she raises an eyebrow at his silence. “If anything, everything is about art.” Her words are precise in a way that his weren’t. “All about perception and the way things are looked at, contemplated and used as reference points for development.” Her lips are thin-set and stare pointed directly at him. He thinks that if her face wasn’t so screwed up with disgust, at him, she might be nice to look at, attractive even. 

Again, he takes too long to answer and she smiles at him so sincerely that if they hadn’t just had that conversation Michael would have considered it flirtatious. So she stalks off with her head held high and coffee in hand.

And Luke’s laughing, even after his peppermint mocha frappe is handed to him. He bumps his elbow into Michael who is still stuck with an incredulous look on his face and then his jaw twitches.

Now maths isn’t just about maths anymore.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(1:49 pm)  **_did i leave my blue notebook at your place?_ **

(1:52 pm)  _??_

(1:52 pm)  _y would it be there?_

(1:52 pm)  **_calum wanted to borrow it for something_ **

(1:52 pm)  **_don’t think he gave it back_ **

(1:52 pm)  **_has notes for psych_ **

(1:53 pm)  **_need it now michael_ **

(1:53 pm)  _i’m not at the apartment_

(1:53 pm)  _so i dunno_

(1:54 pm)  _text calum_

(1:54 pm)  **_you’re not much help r u?_ **

(1:55 pm)  _i could say the same_

(1:56 pm)  **_what? i’m like the best person ever_ **

(1:56 pm)  **_i cleaned your apartment for you guys_ **

(1:56 pm)  **_in exchange for donuts_ **

(1:57 pm)  **_the least u could do is check your place_ **

(1:57 pm)  _not there. remember?_

(2:04 pm)  **_calum says he gave them to cassie who supposedly gave them to stef_ **

(2:04 pm)  **_do i know stef?_ **

(2:05 pm)  _she’s in ur psych class idiot_

(2:05 pm)  **_oh yeah_ **

(2:05 pm)  **_how do u know that?_ **

(2:06 pm)  _ashton’s girl_

(2:09 pm)  **_oh yeah_ **

###

The smell of old paper and the smooth feel of leather is oddly relieving to Michael as he grabbed his copy of ‘The Alchemist’ out of his satchel bag, slinking into _his_ armchair in the library.

Unsurprisingly, Luke had told him to shut up about that girl and her ridiculous theory—but not hesitating to point out that she had said he was also right—because Michael wouldn’t stop talking about it, and her. He had all the evidence to prove her wrong; there were facts and figures and diagrams and examples and— _proof_. But Luke didn’t want any of it. He was sick of it in fact. (Not that he would admit to it, but he was secretly glad he had an afternoon class today when Michael had a morning one, it meant that he didn’t have to listen to something he didn’t care about anymore—it was funny when it happened, but recounting it more than three times became a chore.)

Which leaves Michael with nothing to do really. He could go in to work early—they’d pay him overtime for sure—but he couldn’t be bothered; it was fucking freezing. His ears were numb by the time he’d arrived at the library which was on campus. But, the cold was worth it if it meant not having to pay significantly as much for heating if he just hung out here until summer. Not that he was the one who liked to set the thermostat at the Bahamas’ temperature inside. He could blame Calum for that.

It’s quiet in the library too—where he choses to sit. The circulation desk is almost always buzzing with younger students and teachers alike, wanting to borrow the latest copy of ‘Fundamental Physics’ or ‘Health & Human development; Edition: 3’. No, not on the second floor which was where they use half the area to house student records and the other half is old fiction stuff that no one has bothered to sort out since the books had been moved in there.

He flips the page over too fast—too harsh—a small tear appearing at the top of the page and groans, apologetically trying to think up a suitable reason as to why his Second-Edition copy of the book was tarnished when a gasp, followed by a high-pitch call grabs his attention, long enough for him to look away from the book and then regret looking at all.

“Hey, Maths Guy!” She sounds as surprised as he is—and annoyingly loud for a library environment. He thinks to tell her to shut up and looks over his shoulder to say so but the brunette is standing with her hands on her hips and lips pursed unforgivingly at him. But he doesn’t even register her face because of what she’s wearing. 

Goddamn, she was just supposed to be some crummy Art student, in mismatched clothing. But there she was in a yellow, skin-tight t-shirt and black skinny jeans with a black and white plaid duffle coat over the top. 

He can’t stop staring.

As well as that, she’s wearing yellow—obnoxious—heels that match her top making her look unimaginably taller, considering she was at least 5’8” without them on. 

“What are you doing here?” Finally his eyes catch her face and she’s scowling. 

“I’m reading.” He replies like it should be obvious. Which it should, but he can’t see why she’s so mad about it.

Her eyes narrow even more from her scowl and she stalks over stopping just behind the armchair Michael was sitting in— _his_ armchair, no one else ever sat in it—but not far enough in front of him to stop him having to strain his neck to look at her. “Do I have a bone to pick with you.” She states, eyes captivating, not leaving his. 

He misinterprets it as a question and shrugs, only half interested because _goddammit_ he ripped the fucking page of a high-quality book that wasn’t even his. “I don’t know, do you?”

A look of amusement flutters across her face and he almost misses it because she starts telling him all about the conversation she had with her Art teacher about how art really is the optimum tool for mental processes not maths or some psychology stuff—she was brief on that point. “And,” she continues, “he couldn’t help but agree with me, because imagery is the main way people learn, not just by reading an equation or a graph on a page and understanding what it’s asked of you. Not to mention—”

“They’re the same thing.” Michael interrupts, a relatively blank look on his face. His neck is really taking the toll of where she’s standing; there’s every chance she’s doing it on purpose.

“What?” The brunette’s eyebrows scrunch together.

“An equation and a graph. They can be interpreted as the same thing.” He explains.

She pauses, chewing the inside of her cheek before she smiles playfully. “Are you a mathlete or something?”

“I was.” He admits shamelessly, turning back around finally and rolling his neck while mentally planning on when he was free as to make an appointment to visit his chiropractor.

The girl laughs at him, heaving her backpack slightly higher over her shoulder, which he hadn’t noticed she had with her. “You nerd.” She struts across the seating in front of the window—another reason why Michael liked his spot—and plops down on the orange paisley printed couch opposite him, dumping her bag on the floor next to her. He cringes at her lack of care for her stationary, gratefully looking down at his own things, neatly leaning against the armchair.

“What are you doing here?” He poses the question, half in retaliation to her asking and then making a fool of him and half out of curiosity. 

As her answer she unzips her black backpack—too practical, he thinks, and plain, comparing it to everything else he knows about her(which _is_ limited)—and pulls out two copies of ‘Frankie Magazine’ and a novel by an author whose name he can’t recognise— _Rainbow Rowell_? “I’m reading.” She mocks, drawing out her words so that he knows that she’s repeating what he said earlier. And that’s it. She opens her first copy of ‘Frankie Magazine’ and reads.

He stares, kind of surprised and partially bemused.

Because this isn’t at all what he bargained for when he signed up for college, he didn’t intend on ending up in the back end of the library reading across from someone he wanted to argue _with_ , _to_ , and _about_ for a long while. He didn’t think that Art students could be so quaint, but he thought that might damage her ego worse than he’d mean to so he kept that to himself.

“What’s your name?” He asks as she glances at her watch and suddenly hurries to pack up her books half an hour later.

“Sarah.” She mutters, putting the books back into her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. The girl seems disinterested as she pulls her phone out of her bag, using both hands to type out a message.

“You don’t want to know mine?” The girl notes that he’s almost offended when he says this, and she blinks a few times before shrugging indifferently. He takes a moment to gauge whether or not it was actually worth telling her, based on her interest level. “I’m Michael.”

She nods, unable to think up anything intelligible to say back to him, so she keeps nodding until she’s at the staircase to go downstairs. “See you ‘round I guess.” She calls when she’s halfway down the stairs.

He spends the rest of the hour trying to figure out how she jogged down the stairs in those outrageous heels. 

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(4:27 pm)  **_i think i’ve just been signed up to some community service thing_ **

(4:28 pm)  _?_

(4:28 pm)  _and i have to know because?_

(4:30 pm)  **_i don’t wanna go_ **

(4:30 pm)  **_the flier they handed out says_ **

(4:30 pm)  **_wait for it_ **

(4:31 pm)  **_adopt a ‘grandfriend’_ **

(4:31 pm)  **_GRANDFRIEND_ **

(4:31 pm)  **_!!!_ **

(4:32 pm)  _r capitals necessary?_

(4:33 pm)  _it’s not a big deal luke_

(4:33 pm)  **_not a big deal?_ **

(4:34 pm)  **_couldn’t it have been puppies?_ **

(4:34 pm)  **_puppies r nice_ **

(4:34 pm)  **_i at least like animals_ **

(4:36 pm)  _don’t be ageist_

(4:36 pm)  **_G_ **

(4:36 pm)  **_R_ **

(4:36 pm)  **_A_ **

(4:36 pm)  **_N_ **

(4:36 pm)  **_D_ **

(4:36 pm)  **_F_ **

(4:37 pm)  **_R_ **

(4:37 pm)  _you’re being overdramatic_

(4:37 pm)  **_I_ **

(4:37 pm)  **_E_ **

(4:37 pm)  **_N_ **

(4:37 pm)  **_D_ **

(4:38 pm)  **_it’s a 4 week programme!!!_ **

(4:38 pm)  **_it’s not like i’m doing other things in my life_ **

(4:38 pm)  **_like studying_ **

(4:39 pm)  **_or working_ **

(4:40 pm)  **_or... living_ **

(4:42 pm)  _ageist_

(4:45 pm)  **_i don’t wanna go_ **

###

She’s had a haircut. Why the fuck is that the first thing Michael notices about the brunette—Sarah—when she rocks up at his place in the AM hours on a Saturday? A _Saturday_. Understandably it isn’t God’s day or anything, but it’s definitely students’ day. 

Her hair does look nice. It’s shorter at the back than the front but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to comment on it considering they’re barely on a first-name basis.

Her pleasantly blank look changes to a scowl the moment they both realise who the other is. “What are you doing here?”

“Do you _always_ greet people by asking them what they’re doing?” He asks rather rudely, only opening the door wide enough so that he can stand leaning against the doorframe and still holding the door open casually. From where Sarah’s standing she can’t see passed him into the apartment and she’s praying—hoping that she just has the wrong place.

She puffs out her cheeks, pulling her sleeve back to check her watch and groans internally. “Is Luke here?”

“He doesn’t live here.” He replies curtly, eyebrows settling lowly to match hers. 

“That’s not what I asked.” She blinks at him, backpack only resting on one shoulder. Something about the way she’s evaluating him makes him feel severely like he’s supposed to be scared or uncomfortable. 

She’s in that duffle coat again, paired with that revolting scarf, but it’s a much better match than the first time he saw that scarf on her. “Maybe he has been here. What’s it to you?”

Sarah runs her tongue across her bottom lip, dipping her hand into her pocket conspicuously, but it returns empty. “I’m supposed to talk to him about something.”

“Something?” He asks, eyebrows raised glancing at her pocket and then back at her.

She ignores his suspicion and sighs again, checking her watch once more. “Aren’t you going to invite me in Michael?”

“Not planning on it.” He says bluntly. He’s in deliciously low-hanging, black satin pyjama pants. She unashamedly does a once-over of him and smiles at him innocently when he blushes a deep shade of pink.

“Pity. It could have been fun.” Bittersweetness laces her words delicately as she displays her variation on the word ‘tempting’.

He laughs gruffly. “Fun?” He repeats.

“Yes, _fun_.” Sarah emphasises showing all her teeth when she smiles and her eyes flash and he stares at them for a moment too long in too much depth. “But if you don’t know where Luke is, that’s fine. Thank you for your time.”

They make each other wait until she’s at the very end of the hallway before she glances back with a fleeting look right when he calls out to her. “How about a coffee?”

Sarah quirks an eyebrow at him, as if to deliberate whether or not she has time to spare him even though she had just asked to come in. “I suppose I could spare half an hour to argue with you about Art and Maths. I wouldn’t be wasting any time anyway.” She shrugs, heading back to his apartment where he holds the door open for her, but doesn’t take more than a step inside when she looks back at him—he’s halfway through looking her up and down.

“Are you sure you want to spend half an hour being talked down?” He jokes, shutting the door, face a faint tinge of pink from being caught but otherwise non-sussed by it. “But, relating to what you said last week—”

“Milk and two sugars.” She says nonchalantly, sitting down at the bench in the kitchen. And there she is, infiltrating his home, his kitchen, asking for coffee—she’s suddenly in his life. 

Michael rolls his eyes at what Luke had said to him, “ _You’re probably never going to see her again._ ” Yeah right, and here she is, sitting at the bench, shrugging off her coat and draping her scarf over the back of the stool. Speak of the devil—

“What did you have to talk to Luke about anyway?”

“It wasn’t actually me directly talking to him. It’s my roommate. She’s doing some stuff and he’s involved or something but she’s busy and wasn’t sure about stuff but had his address and I went there—thank god it was on campus, but the guy there said to try here because Luke wasn’t there—”

“It wasn’t that Adam guy was it? Asshole.” He mumbles under his breath, but Sarah hears him and smirks with raised eyebrows.

“He was quite nice actually.”

“I bet he was.” Michael comments, glancing for less than a second at her breasts, of course she catches him, _of course_ , and she glares at Michael, folding her arms over her chest defensively. Not that her rolled-neck tight-knit jumper is helping her cause.

The kettle boils interrupting their conversation which hadn’t really achieved what he’s asked about, but somehow he’s pieced together that it had nothing to do with her. 

Michael makes her coffee. 

He makes himself coffee. 

Sarah rather openly checks him out again as he leans over the bench between them while he sips his coffee, the conversation stationed around quaint concepts of which is better: Maths or Art. But once the coffee’s finished the conversation quickly escalates to a debate—then—to an argument; loud and brash.

“—and Art is such an opinion-based idea, what is it ever going to achieve honestly?” Michael boasts, rolling his eyes. But Sarah’s not having any of it.

“It’s going to revolutionise people, because we’re going to be fuelled by new ways to look at and view and perceive issues and problems that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to solve because of one-way thinking such as—”

The door opens. They don’t _fall_ into the apartment per-say, but there was a certain fierceness to what was... happening. And yet, as Calum—Michael's roommate— straightens his shirt out, takes his girlfriend's hand which had ended up bunched in the hem of his short, he looks at the two standing in the kitchen, well and truly in each other’s personal space, _he_ asks. “Are we interrupting something?” With a smug look that Sarah wants to wipe right off his face. She instead takes an instinctive step away from Michael who in turn leans back against the bench top casually.

“Have you seen Luke?” Sarah asks, feigning pleasantness. 

“Yeah, just with him. What do you want?” Calum thinks to be cautious with her, his girlfriend assuredly is.

“To talk to him.” She says simply. 

He doesn’t twitch like she thinks he will—at how calm she’s acting. “About what?”

“My business. Not yours.” 

“Whatever.” Calum makes sure to bump into her as he walks passed, through to the hallway.

The girl he’d come in with stays back though, eyes trained on Sarah. She doesn’t speak first.

“Cassie.” Sarah states; a curt—if anything—greeting.

“Sarah.” The girl, Cassie, says in reply, following after Calum and making sure to shut the door to his room heavily.

The silence that ensues is neither uncomfortable nor comfortable. Sarah takes her mug from the bench and rinses it, leaving it next to the sink. She then does the same with Michael’s mug.

Michael’s too out of sorts with this though. “Did you two like... having a falling out?”

“What?” Sarah snaps, sort of like whiplash but more violent. “No. We’re just... competitive.” She finishes, teeth set together and letting out a deep, slow breath.

“Right. Competitive. In what?” He asks. He thinks he shouldn’t have, judging by the look on her face, but when she looks at him—and he’s already looking at her—her shoulders slump a little bit.

“Art.” 

“Oh. So, you two don’t like each other then?” His guess seems to make her tune back in to how she was acting before: more hostile; more what he could deal with.

She pouts, not at him. But she just pouts for a moment, thinking through the right way to say this and also making it sound like something she should say. “I don’t know about not liking each other. She’s a good artist—”

“But you don’t like her as a person.” Michael wasn’t really guessing anymore. It was unnerving her more than she let on. 

“I don’t know her well enough to make any judgements.” Sarah clarifies sternly to Michael, looking down the hallway at Calum’s shut door. “But—” She catches herself inadvertently being too... soft and easy and nice. “But, Luke hasn’t mentioned anything about Ellise?”

“Who?” Michael asks, pushing off the bench and raising his eyebrows. He gestures for her to sit on the couch with him but he’s only halfway across the room when he sees her glancing at her watch again, this time swearing loudly and rushing to shove on her coat. 

She flings her scarf unattractively around her shoulders and hauls her backpack over her shoulder. “My roommate. Luke didn’t say anything about her?”

“N-no. He didn’t. You have to go?”

She’s at the door when she nods, shutting it behind her without a ‘goodbye’.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(7:03 pm)  **_shit_ **

(7:04 pm)  **_i have a problem_ **

(7:05 pm)  **_ash’s girlfriend..._ **

(7:05 pm)  **_stef!_ **

(7:05 pm)  **_has befriended me_ **

(7:05 pm)  **_and she’s like really nice and shit_ **

(7:07 pm)  _u don’t like her do you?_

(7:08 pm)  **_what?_ **

(7:08 pm)  **_no_ **

(7:09 pm)  **_but she suggested_ **

(7:09 pm)  **_actually insisted_ **

(7:09 pm)  **_that we all go out sometime_ **

(7:09 pm)  **_as in her and ash and me_ **

(7:10 pm)  **_but then she said no not me third-wheeling_ **

(7:10 pm)  **_she wants me to bring a date!_ **

(7:10 pm)  _ i’m not being your date _

(7:10 pm)  **_i don’t have a date_ **

(7:11 pm)  **_i wasn’t going to take u_ **

(7:12 pm)  _i’m offended_

(7:12 pm)  _aren’t i nice enough to take out and be your pretend girlfriend?_

(7:15 pm)  **_do u know how many things r wrong with what u just said?_ **

(7:15 pm)  **_that whole sentence_ **

(7:15 pm)  **_never say those words in that order again_ **

(7:15 pm)  **_because no_ **

(7:15 pm)  **_i’m not inviting u to be my date_ **

(7:17 pm)  _rude_

(7:19 pm)  _have fun going alone then_

(7:27 pm)  **_calum wants to know y that chick was there at your place_ **

(7:27 pm)  **_he doesn’t mean the art chick does he?_ **

(7:28 pm)  _...he does_

(7:28 pm)  _it’s been like a week_

(7:28 pm)  _does he actually care?_

(7:28 pm)  **_??_ **

(7:29 pm)  **_he’s suspicious_ **

(7:29 pm)  **_that’s what cassie said at least_ **

(7:29 pm)  _art chick wanted to talk to you though_

(7:29 pm)  **_why does she want to talk to me?_ **

(7:30 pm)  _?_

(7:30 pm)  _something about her roommate_

(7:31 pm)  **_her roommate isn’t that bella girl i ran into the other day?_ **

(7:32 pm)  _?_

(7:33 pm)  _alice or something_

(7:33 pm)  _not bella_

(7:33 pm)  _what happened with bella?_

(7:34 pm)  **_i half-asked her to be my date for the thing with ash and stef_ **

(7:34 pm)  _“half-asked”_

(7:35 pm)  **_well i said something about dinner_ **

(7:35 pm)  **_but fuck it’s tomorrow and i’m not showing up alone_ **

(7:35 pm)  **_didn’t ash tell her that i don’t have a girlfriend?_ **

(7:36 pm)  _i already said i’m not going with you_

(7:38 pm)  _go with your half-asked date_

(7:39 pm)  _get it?_

(7:41 pm)  _‘half-asked’_

(7:41 pm)  _as in_

(7:41 pm)  _u didn’t really ask her_

(7:43 pm)  _ ‘half-assed’ _

(8:01 pm)  **_you are the worst_ **

###

Sarah is phenomenally drunk the next time Michael sees her.

She’s dancing—wobbling—on some cheap plywood coffee table in the living room at Tiffany Warlock’s(the resident Communications Major) place. 

Her black pencil skirt is hitched up to the tops of her thighs and the dull blue henley she’s wearing is all unbuttoned exposing way too much skin for her to be comfortable with if she was sober and Michael wasn’t looking. 

But he is, and he isn’t comfortable either.

The blonde girl standing with her—next to the table—barely allows for a moment’s notice before she’s shouting, but her voice is indistinguishable over the music(if he could call it that) and she attaches her stare to Michael as soon as he walks in the door—no, not to him, passed him—to Luke. He looks equally as surprised as Michael and the blonde girl wastes no time to wade through the living room and foyer until she’s standing, shoving her hand against Luke’s chest—hard—and yelling aggressive slurs that make no sense to Michael whatsoever.

And Sarah— _Sarah_ is watching the scene unfold, standing on the coffee table, but then she shifts so that she’s looking at him, and this distinct feeling of discomfort gets to him this time. Her hair is twisted into something supposedly resembling a top-knot, which it might have been, before she arrived.

She seems to be waiting for something. Maybe him.

Michael takes his chances and strides over until he’s standing at the coffee table and she’s quirking an eyebrow at him, not so subtly being pleased to see him. Her smile is big and bright and she’s wasted and she’s leaning in towards him and without meaning to he glances at her cleavage as she balances herself out holding onto his shoulder going to whisper in his ear. Shit, she’s wearing a black lacy bra. He can’t un-see that. “You know something?” She whispers—or at least that’s what he thinks she’s trying to do. “You’re really cute when you’re flustered.” And she giggles. Red-faced, loud, annoying _giggling_.

Michael goes to remind her that she’s the one who’s drunk, loud and started their whole argument... _thing_ , but Sarah isn’t even paying attention to him anymore as she grabs a bottle off Marcus Abbott as he crosses the room and Sarah vaguely remembers him being interested in Ellise, who is having an _intense_ conversation with Luke.

The music is amped up and Michael only cringes at the tasteless choice of mismatched speakers (probably set up with bluetooth) stuffed into every corner of the room, as well as lingering throughout the house. Sarah on the other hand seems to be enjoying the extra noise and dances—what he thinks she thinks is dancing; more just swaying and bobbing along to the music—before she turns to the crowd and no one’s really paying attention but he doesn’t think that’s the point to what she says.

“College is just one. Big. Party.” She declares raising her hand with the bottle and half the room cheers after her. “And art rules!” Sarah shouts over the top of some party remixed version of ‘Tainted Love’ before she sings along, out of tune and slurry, looking him dead in the eye.

Then she totters, tips, topples—and dammit if she blames anything other than the heels and lands on the floor, and he’s sure there was a bone-cracking crunch but she’s laughing—or—no, she’s crying. No... she’s laughing to hide the fact that it actually hurt. And someone’s hauling her to her feet by her waist and someone else is taking her arm and gripping insanely to it, as if to make sure she won’t fall again. If anything, it looks like she’s more inclined to fall now. 

In the rush of it all she’s reassuring them that she’s fine and doesn’t need their helpwhile adjusting her skirt appropriately, and Michael’s stepping forward to be front and centre of her attention and her eyes fall on his stately.

He doesn’t catch her. Not exactly. It’s what Sarah refers to as support. It _is_ what Michael calls catching.

Someone calls—“We need ice.”—and Michael helps her sit back down on said table she’s just fallen off and demands she hand over her heels. 

“No!” She cries, offended by such a request.

He sighs, and thinks what he’s done to deserve this. He’s just got here and already he’s babysitting someone. Normally that doesn’t happen until the AM hours. “I’m not asking for your panties, just your heels.”

Sarah rolls her eyes at him, reluctantly handing over the first black shoe. “Not _yet_ , right?” She sarcastically corrects him and gives him the other. 

Michael tries to ignore the feeling of complete and utter embarrassment while she seems to have no shame whatsoever. It intrigues him more than it should, but then again it could just be the alcohol that’s making her like this.

The black nail polish on her toes is chipped all over the place, Sarah doesn’t do much to help it, picking at a slightly peeling piece on her big toe of her left foot.

“Nothing’s broken right?” He quickly asks, needing only a brief reminder when she take a sharp inhale as she goes to shift how she’s sitting.

She shakes her head viciously and he can only take her word for it, and hand her the ice once it’s made it’s way over.

“How much have you had to drink?” He thinks it can’t be more than a cruiser or something like that, but based on the skeptical look she returns, he begins to doubt it. Her shrug isn’t reassuring either. She holds the ice to her right hip and they sit there for a bit and he doesn’t want to— _isn’t sure_ —if he should ask something else but he can’t for the life of him think of anything to say. 

Finally Sarah sighs and stands up holding her hand out and dropping the ice. The ice has left a deceptive dark stain on her blue top and she looks cold; even though she’s inside—even though she’s completely surrounded by other people. Michael doesn’t realise for a moment that she wants her shoes back. “I’m gonna go.” She says finally, once he hands the heels back. “I won’t be partying anymore tonight unfortunately.” Her tone almost has a sober ring to it.

It’s quite clear how much pain she’s in, but he doesn’t want to carry her out. Does he? That’d be a nice thing to do, but kind of weird. They’re not even friends, are they? The only thing he can remember that they do on record is argue. That doesn’t equal friendship in anybody’s vocabulary, surely.

He follows her to the door anyway.

Luke and Ellise aren’t where they were but that’s not really surprising and Sarah makes no effort to find either of them. Michael thinks to text Luke and tell him he’s leaving but he’s sure that Luke’s preoccupied with a better offer than Michael texting him so he lets it slide and they walk outside once Sarah’s wrangled her coat from the overflowing coat rack next to the front door. He hadn’t even taken his jacket off—not that he was there long enough to need to.

The front porch smells like smoke and the far corner is littered with cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. Three people are clustered against the front railing but Sarah and Michael pass without recognition and then she’s walking down the street. He’s not even sure she knows he’s following her so he clears his throat just to make sure. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder at him, just lets out a puffy breath of air that comes out in a white cloud in the cold night air as acknowledgement.

He stays behind her until they get to the end of the street. She turns the corner and Michael begins to wonder where she parked her car. But he doesn’t say anything until they get to the main road and finally he stops alongside her as she punches the ‘walk’ button. “Where do you live?”

Sarah looks taken back and surprised and partly contemplative. “We’re only on a first name basis, do I trust you?” Her eyes narrow until she’s only squinting at him. She’s so drunk.

His cheeks puff out, partly annoyed and partly thinking about how to answer her. “Well... I guess if you don’t trust me you might not get home tonight safely and if that was the case—”

“You care about my safety?” A haphazard smile falters across her face, as if she isn’t supposed to show it.

Michael clears his throat; this is a different type of embarrassment altogether but still has the same effect. He stalls and looks at her, and blinks, and blinks, and blinks—she takes his hand and pulls him across the street when the walking signal changes to green. He makes to shake her hand from his, but her fingers are like ice—and then she’s clumsily retracting her hand anyway.

“Where are we going?” He asks as she continues in front of him and he takes longer steps to keep up. 

Sarah sighs loudly, sarcastically and looks over her shoulder to ensure that he sees her roll her eyes. “I’m going to my dorm.” Then pauses, as if waiting for him to figure out the rest. Which he does, but—“I don’t know where you’re planning on going, but I’m going to my dorm.” She repeats.

He’s already made his decision about what he’s going to tell her, he made it before they walked outside. “I’m walking you home. Who knows where you’ll end up otherwise.” His words leave their intended effect when she shoots him a razor sharp glare, and he visibly flinches, which must be her intention because she smirks at him.

They walk wordlessly for a while, both leading the way, but the five minute drive they both took on the way there, stretches out to a decent twenty minute walk.

“I’m still mad at you.” He finally splutters out, three blocks from campus.

Sarah crooks an eyebrow at him. “I’m not surprised, but about what?”

“All of this art versus maths business, and you acting like a princess about it. Like you’re entitled to being right all the time—” She grapples his wrist pulling them both to a standstill.

“You did not just call me Princess.” She accuses, pointing a shaky finger at him with as much fierceness as she can manage.

Michael thinks that at this rate he might actually have a chance of winning an argument against her—not that he’s lost one with her, yet. “And if I did?” He challenges.

He thinks it takes her too long to figure out what he’s actually asking, her hand falls from his wrist and they begin walking again, annoyance still splashed across her face, and then she’s scowling and her face is red and she’s drunk, tottering along besides him with his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets and she’s got her coat draped over her shoulders with her hands clasped together; fingers entwined naively. “You... you... Captain Asshole.” She calls too loudly.

Michael laughs, actually—it’s more of a snort really. Then loud too, and lively. He bumps her shoulder slightly with his arm and it unbalances her more than he thought it would and catches her arm before she can fall and then they’re both laughing and leaning into each other as they walk back to her place. 

“I ruined your night, didn’t I?” She pouts at him, on the last block before campus. Without her heels on Sarah’s slightly shorter than him—heels on though and she’s the same height.

He looks at her for a moment, look shifting from the cheek-pinching grin to a more subtle look: interest, intrigue, and thoughtfulness. “Of course not. This usually happens anyway.” Michael adds.

“What, you have to take Luke home and tuck him in and all that shit?” She giggles and her face is red again and it makes him really wonder how much she’s had to drink and how long it will take to wear off.

He nods and shrugs. “Something like that.”

Her key is wedged somewhere in her bra—the black lacy one—and Sarah has to fish it out in front of the door to her dorm. Michael suggested that she knock and her roommate could just let her in, but with a confused scowl she explains that Ellise is her roommate. That seemed as good an explanation as any. 

“But you know,” he begins, his head already swimming with interesting things he could pick at. “With a little bit of engineering and mathematical expertise on my part, we could unlock this door without a key.” 

Sarah half-squints at him as she unlocks the door. “Prove it.” She suggests, a murky smug look on her face.

But Michael’s too quick for her and knows what she’s thinking. “And lock me out? Not yet.” He mimics her from earlier, but it’s beyond her. Or she’s beyond it. He’s not sure. “So what’s your arty comeback to that?” He pesters.

“It’s art based...” she begins, eyes already drooping. He’s beginning to think that it was a good idea for her to come home early. “Because it’s not maths.” She defends weakly.

“Of course it’s maths based. Everything is maths based.” Michael’s sure that if she wasn’t so drunk she’d be scowling or rolling her eyes or—being blatantly rude. “How drunk you are is even based on maths. How cool is that?” He exasperates, eyes bright as he follows her into her dorm while she tucks her key back into her pocket.

Sarah flops back on her bed, tired and drunk. “That’s so not right. It’s like... perspective and shit, umm... looking at things and thinking... about art?” Even she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

“What?” His smile is lazy and slightly confused as he sits down on the bed next to her, she’s staring interestedly at the ceiling but he’s looking at her. She’s all soft edges and sharp attitude and warm feelings with cold outlooks.

Rolling onto her stomach she commando crawls sidewards until she’s lying on her stomach next to where Michael’s sitting with his legs over the side of the bed. Her almost innocent look is a dead giveaway of her thoughts because she’s as confused as he is and then she’s laughing, laughing—and it’s all wide smiles and sweet sounds that he doesn’t want to compare to anything he likes but he can’t help it and it reminds him of cotton candy—and he’s clumsy with this kind of stuff and it makes him nervous and anxious and surprisingly calm as she shakes her head probably having no idea what they’re even laughing about but it doesn’t matter.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(1:14 am)  **_i’m moving in with u_ **

(1:16 am)  _y?_

(1:16 am)  **_so that she doesn’t find me and kill me_ **

(1:16 am)  _who?_

(1:16 am)  _the blondie who hassled u at tif’s party?_

(1:17 am)  **_yes_ **

(1:17 am)  **_her_ **

(1:17 am)  **_she’s scary_ **

(1:18 am)  _scary like alluring scary_

(1:18 am)  _or scary like she could kill you scary_

(1:18 am)  _?_

(1:18 am)  **_both_ **

(1:19 am)  _sexy and terrifying? that’s a first_

(1:19 am)  **_not really_ **

(1:20 am)  **_the art chick ur into is sexy and terrifying_ **

(1:20 am)  _nah, not terrifying_

(1:20 am)  _sinister more like_

(1:21 am)  **_do u ever doubt our choice in women?_ **

(1:22 am)  _what?_

(1:22 am)  _did we or did we not just identify two sexy girls_

(1:22 am)  **_and the fact that they scare us isn’t... scaring u?_ **

(1:23 am)  _it’s kinda hot_

(1:27 am)  **_do u know who marcus abbott is?_ **

(1:28 am)  _ah, sarah mentioned something about him_

(1:28 am)  _??_

(1:28 am)  _ is he important? _

(1:29 am)  **_what about Ellise?_ **

(1:29 am)  **_like... him and Ellise_ **

(1:29 am)  _blondie?_

(1:29 am)  _oh_

(1:29 am)  _bro_

(1:30 am)  _sarah said he was thick-headed_

(1:30 am)  _but not as nicely_

(1:30 am)  _she’s got a dirty mouth when she’s drunk_

(1:31 am)  **_dude_ **

(1:31 am)  **_were you not there when she first met u?_ **

(1:32 am)  **_she told u to fuck off_ **

(1:33 am)  _yeah but_

(1:34 am)  _art chick = dirty mouth_

(1:34 am)  _drunk art chick = dirty mouth x 1000_

(1:34 am)  _level-up worthy_

###

“Cut the shit. Even maths can be interpreted as art if you have the right—”

“Perspective?” He asks slyly. “Don’t bother with that because art can be interpreted as maths more than the other way around.”

“But it’s all due to interpretation! That’s the thing. That’s a skill used more in art than it is in maths and if you need to interpret something to get it from maths to art then clearly this has more to do with art than maths.” Sarah concludes folding her arms, mouth set in a grim line. It seems to be like this a lot now. She’s always frowning. Understandably it’s getting closer to the end of the year and things _are_ getting more stressful, but that’s not reason enough for her to be so hostile and _flat_. 

That’s it. They’re her only two emotions besides angry and brutal.

Somehow, _somehow_ , all four of them—Sarah, Ellise, Luke, and Michael—all ended up having lunch on the Monday after the party at a sandwich shop around the corner from campus. And then suddenly it becomes ritual to have lunch there at least once a week.

“Everything can be perceived, it has nothing to do with art.” He says back at her even though she thought she had finished the argument.

Sarah groans taking a hand through her messy hair. A half-empty cup of coffee is teetering precariously on the edge of the table and Michael has every mind to reach over and steady it, but that would mean reaching across Sarah, and in her current state, he feels that she’s more inclined to take his arm off before letting him get anywhere near her coffee. “Yes, it does.” And that’s it.

Maybe it’s bristling anger—seething. Seething is better, but even her sentences are short and spiked, so yes, it is bristling.

“But not solely—”

“I understand it’s not _solely_ art, Michael. But it has more to do with it than it does with maths.” Her nails strum against the table top once. They’re an obnoxious shade of pink. Offensive, if anything—Michael thinks. 

He can’t decide if it’s a blessing or a curse when Ellise strolls in, white scarf wrapped multiple times around her neck. It also seems out of character that she’s wearing a Christmas sweater: red with white reindeer and big snowflakes in a border print when she’s a fucking Fashion Major. 

_Definitely_ a curse.

She sits down opposite Michael and then they’re both staring at her. “Okay. What?” She asks—more snaps than asks. 

“What _are_ you wearing?” Sarah asks. At least it saves Michael the opportunity to offend her. Better have a friend do that rather than him.

Ellise looks down at her jumper and unwraps her scarf until it’s just sitting around her shoulders. She shrugs looking blankly at the ridiculous print of the jumper. “I thought it was seasonable. It is December after all.”

Sarah rolls her eyes, groaning, and rests her cheek against her hand. “Don’t remind me.” Even the sandwich shop has little fairy lights decorating every possible surface. Michael doesn’t quite understand what Sarah doesn’t like about Christmas but at this rate he’s too afraid to ask—be it a sob story or an angry retelling. 

Ellise grins and shakes her head at Sarah, rolling her eyes. “You’re being overdramatic.” 

The face Sarah pulls is a mix of tense and cringe-worthy. “Overdramatic? You’ve strung five different colours of tinsel around our dorm and you _know_ I’m allergic to dust. Not to mention that tree I talked you out of buying—” She cuts herself off and narrows her eyes at the blonde. Ellise turns the same shade as her jumper. “You bought it! I specifically told you not to. I can’t believe you.” She huffs loudly and Michael remains passive to the situation, thankful when Luke claps him on the shoulder, shuffling around the table to sit next to Ellise, opposite Sarah.

“What’d I miss?” He asks. He’s late. As always. Just something Michael got used to after a while and when Michael had the smart idea to tell him lunch was scheduled fifteen minutes earlier, Luke figured it out, and continued to show up late.

Michael looks between the two girls who don’t look half as annoyed as a moment ago, but rather bittersweetly grinning at each other and then Luke. 

No one offers up an answer to Luke immediately so Sarah turns to Michael. He flinches, and no doubt they all see it. There’s every chance she’ll just go back to being angry at him, but that’s about the same as her being angry with Ellise, and also telling Luke ‘what’s up’. She pulls out a couple of sheets of paper from her backpack at her feet. “Michael, I would appreciate if you read over this for me. It’s just a draft, but—”

“Aha! So, you’re finally admitting that I have a better _perspective_ than you.” He smirks, taking the stapled paper from her and putting it in front of him to read later.

Whatever possibility of her not being mad at him there was, diminishes.

Sarah’s expression melts into a loathing scowl. She thumps her hand down on the table and he isn’t sure whether to keep laughing or cower but—

Coffee goes everywhere. 

A complete moment of anger, anguish, annoyance—anything negative beginning with ‘a’—crosses Sarah’s face before calm. Utter... nothing. She takes a deep breath, but Michael doesn’t miss the way she clenches her fingers into her hands hard enough to leave divots in her palm from her fingernails. “Motherfucker.” She curses, no doubt that the employee standing closest to their table turns and glares at her.

“I’m really sorry about that—” He starts.

“—perspective? Really? Like, you couldn’t have just been glad I asked you?”

“You—what?”

She groans, shrugging off her jacket to reveal a plain black top. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? And you owe me a coffee.”

Later—after: an argument, another coffee, and more employees staring unappreciatively at them—Sarah and Ellise leave, arms linked, words hushed, and scarves looped skilfully around their necks. 

Luke turns to Michael, look calculating. “So are you infuriated or infatuated?” He asks with a smirk so pronounced that Michael can’t help but admit it, knowing exactly what— _who_ , he’s talking about.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(10:23 am)  **_so what ur telling me is that because i opened the umbrella half way out the door im half cursed?_ **

(10:24 am)  **_that doesn’t even make sense_ **

(10:26 am)  _yeah it does_

(10:27 am)  **_how do i uncurse myself then?_ **

(10:27 am)  _you just gotta wait it out_

(10:28 am)  **_what am i cursed for?_ **

(10:28 am)  **_am i in complete jeopardy?_ **

(10:28 am)  **_is anything even going to happen?_ **

(10:30 am)  _..._

(10:31 am)  **_screw u and ur superstitions_ **

(10:36 am)  _what do u know about degas?_

(10:36 am)  _the artist_

(10:37 am)  **_he was the one who painted the ballerinas right?_ **

(10:38 am)  _yeah_

(10:38 am)  _right_

(10:38 am)  _well she wrote 2 pages about that_

(10:38 am)  _2 fucking pages!!!_

(10:39 am)  _doubel sided_

(10:41 am)  **_u did tell her you’d read it_ **

(10:42 am)  _ i am _

(10:42 am)  _but its 2000 words of bullshit_

(10:43 am)  _changing tenses_

(10:43 am)  _referring to herself in first person_

(10:43 am)  _way to many semi colons_

(10:44 am)  **_if ur going to be that worried about her grammar should u really be concerned at all_ **

(10:45 am)  _??_

(10:46 am)  **_she’s a mess_ **

(10:46 am)  _??_

(10:46 am)  **_and no doubt ur attracted to her_ **

(10:46 am)  **_ur making it too obvious_ **

(10:47 am)  _well i wasn’t really going for subtlety_

(10:47 am)  _but what does that have to do with anything?_

(10:48 am)  **_don’t bother with all this other stuff_ **

(10:48 am)  **_shit man she likes u as much as u like her_ **

(10:51 am)  _but degas_

(10:51 am)  _!!!_

(10:52 am)  _ur cursed man_

###

Her obnoxious pink shirt is half blue with wet paint. But she doesn’t even see him when she walks passed. She doesn’t look fazed about the paint either. However he only thinks that because of her hand which is wrapped around a few sheets of paper, strangling them to pieces. 

“Motherfucker.” She swears, loudly, when he taps her on the shoulder and he almost falls over backwards when she does so. 

Michael should have just left her alone.

Probably.

Yeah, definitely.

Instead he bumps into a bench, falls onto it, and then almost off it. He catches himself right when Sarah’s stare settles beadily on him. She doesn’t even seem mildly surprised. “Look, I get that you want to argue about whatever that shit is that we argue about, but right now isn’t the time.” Her voice is so even it makes his eyes go wide and finally he looks at the strangled papers in her non-paint soaked hand and she bunches them up into a ball in her blue hand and throws it at him. Hard. 

It doesn’t hit him as hard as he thought it would, but it leaves a sloppy blue stain on his white t-shirt. His eyebrows draw together in a confused, angry fixation.

Sarah groans, more internally than externally and turns without another word. This time he leaves her alone. And unfurls the sheets of paper which had fallen to the floor next to him.

_See me at the end of the next class Sarah._

On a paper she’d written about Edgar Degas, entitled; ‘Dancers or Depiction of Isolation?’ But not the draft he’d... critiqued.

It’s four pages long and quite detailed, opinionated and _wrong_. Maybe he isn’t an Art Major, but he’s sure that what she’s saying isn’t what it’s meant to be saying... or something like that. Her writing is hostile and written in first-person which he’s sure isn’t allowed in a formal paper, but he reads it. He reads it all.

Michael takes it with him to the library and sits in _his_ armchair and finishes it, pursing his lips. Because he doesn’t want to be the bad guy, but he can’t help but agree with what the teacher has written on the bottom of the first page.

It isn’t until later—much later—(five minutes before he sees her again actually)that he even considers why there was blue paint on half her shirt. Even though it’s one he doesn’t particularly like of hers, it mustn’t have been very nice to be covered in the gooey liquid-plastic feeling stuff.

And then she walks right into him when she leaves the girls’ bathrooms. Walks into his shoulder. He can _feel_ the indent her nose leaves. And then her face is red—her nose isn’t bleeding—but she’s embarrassed and angry and furious, at everything: at him, at her teacher, at her paper, at her ugly duffle coat that she’s currently wearing, at her wet blue top in her hand, at—“Did you read it?” Sarah snaps, glaring at the sheets of paper clutched in his hand. 

He nods once.

“Well, what did you think? Should I honestly bother to go and see him after class tomorrow?” She drawls. “Or is my _perspective_ too far fetched?” Michael can tell that she’s trying not to sound angry and probably that she’s hopelessly failing at it, but he can’t contain the paranoia he feels for being honest with her. But he has to.

“I think... well you do make some good points in certain areas,” he watches her closely for any hint of negative reaction to what he’s telling her and takes half a step backwards. “But—” She flinches. “—I have to agree with your teacher. You didn’t follow through with what’s asked—”

“I knew it.” She mutters. Sarah doesn’t shriek like he expects her too, or throw a tantrum, or cry, or _anything_ really. “I fucking... knew it.” Disappointment severs her words. Then she snatches her work back from him, still covered in semi-dry paint. But she doesn’t care, and he’s still paranoid. 

His eyebrows furrow and he knows just by the sidewards glance she shoots him, that she’s mad at what he’d said about her work. “Look, I’m just being honest. Based on what you wrote it sounds like... well... at the end of the day I’m going to be a doctor with a medical degree and end up as a world class surgeon—”

Sarah scoffs. “Because your parents have paved your way to glory—”

“—you’re going to be living off chance freelance work renting a—”

“—so much better than everyone else because you’ll have a solid income—”

“—the truth. That’s all I’m saying—”

“—wear a Rolex for—”

“—birthday present. What does that have to do with—”

“—not decent enough for anything. Anything!”

“—you’ll find someone who can support the both of you and you can do your art stuff—”

“—support myself thank you very much. But _that’s_ what you got from my paper? Fuck you.” And that’s the last of it. Even though she’s riled up and her hands are bunched into fists at her sides and when she steps around him he can hear the cluster of pencils shake in her pocket. If Sarah had anything else on him, then she might have taken a swing at his pretty face, but knowing him, he’d have his parents pay to patch it up like it was nothing.

She marches away with her head held high and he sighs.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(4:16 pm)  **_hey i need ur help with something_ **

(4:19 pm)  _i thought u understood the whole baby making process_

(4:20 pm)  **_okay no_ **

(4:20 pm)  **_why r we friends?_ **

(4:21 pm)  _because u need me help_

(4:22 pm)  **_right_ **

(4:22 pm)  **_i need like a 12 volunteers for my psych project_ **

(4:24 pm)  _u gonna make me take drugs?_

(4:24 pm)  _bc i’m down for that_

(4:24 pm)  _unless ur not offering_

(4:24 pm)  _then i don’t do drugs_

(4:25 pm)  _ever_

(4:26 pm)  _don’t tell my mum_

(4:26 pm)  _i’ll blackmail u_

(4:27 pm)  _ i swear _

(4:31 pm)  _lucas!!!_

(4:34 pm)  **_i repeat_ **

(4:34 pm)  **_why r we friends?_ **

(4:35 pm)  **_it has nothing to do with drugs_ **

(4:35 pm)  **_you just need to keep an emotional diary for two weeks with 3 independent variables of your choice as topics from ones i’ve preselected_ **

(4:37 pm)  _wtf_

(4:37 pm)  _like... how often i cry_

(4:38 pm)  **_potentially_ **

(4:38 pm)  _well this may be news to u but_

(4:39 pm)  _i don’t remember the last time i cried dude_

(4:39 pm)  _talk to girls about that kind of shit_

(4:41 pm)  **_you gonna help or not?_ **

(4:42 pm) **_???_ **

(4:43 pm)  _fine_

(4:44 pm)  _but u owe me_

###

She successfully avoids him for two days entirely before conceding and invites him along to the art rooms after lunch in the two seconds she stops him just outside the library. Michael is so flabbergasted by how many words she can fit into a sentence and how quickly she speaks he wonders if it’s the coffee or if it’s just her but then she smiles and... and he could have sworn he melted. 

Part of him isn’t sure about her tone—it seemed off, like she’d forced herself to tell him all that rather than just thought it to be a good idea. Maybe she was sorry after all. He doubts it. Sarah wouldn’t have the character to apologise, especially when he’s sure she still blames him for the whole ‘Degas’ fiasco. He can’t blame _her_ really—she was blindingly upset, not to mention that he had the audacity to call her out for her behaviour like she was a child and then proceed to treat her like one. No, she’s not sorry. Michael’s sure of it.

And when he walks into the art room he’s sort of surprised by how light it is. The floor to double-height ceiling windows look out onto the courtyard which branches off the Medical department and has a spectacular view of the tops of the city over the flat roof on the Medic ward. The room is also significantly more spacious than he expected it to be, not that he thought all artist’s worked in cramped spaces, but that they wouldn’t use all the space provided. Yet the room seems almost crowded despite its generous size, with canvases and easels and tins of paint; industrial sized paint brushes and rollers and palette knives and clusters of white sheets splayed with a rainbow of speckled paint. The air is musty with paint—he knows it can’t be asbestos, but he does keep in mind that they used to use it in paint making so he’s slightly more wary of his breath, coming in slower now; both in awe and caution.

Two large tables are pushed against the wall furthest from the door, also covered in paint, but like it had been purposely put there in that way; smeared across the tabletop. Sarah is sitting at one of the tables. An A3 book is open in front of her; to a half annotated-half sketched page done entirely in fine liner and grey lead pencil. She hasn’t seen him yet so he walks slowly, every step deliberate, making sure not to walk into any of the tripping hazards. He bites back a laugh when he thinks that OH&S would have a field day in here if they had the chance. 

Michael makes it to two steps behind her while eyeing her work carefully before announcing his arrival. Sarah—who had been balancing her chin in her palm with her elbow resting against the table—falls flat on her face against her work. If that hadn’t have happened she would have screamed.

She hits him instead.

He doesn’t argue because it wasn’t really fair.

She scowls at him for a long moment, trying to determine if it’s indifference that she detects or just plain apology. He thinks that she decides on indifference and lets him sit down next to her.

“So what was this morning all about?” He asks, half a smile creeping up the side of his face. 

“This morning?” Confusion strings its way across her own. “Did something happen?”

“I meant when you talked to me in front of the library.” Michael clarifies and Sarah shuffles her book away from them and she re-rests her chin in her palm—elbow against the table. 

“Oh. That. Well, I was in a hurry and I figured that if you’re going to be so thick-headed about my opinion because it seems so fake to you, then what better way to prove it than to show you.” She reasons with a cheery tone. Still off-kilter, he thinks.

He smirks. “Prove that you’re wrong?” He means it as a joke, _of course_. But, _of course_ she only glares and he sees the menacing look cross her eyes and then her jaw clenches and she relaxes—somewhat. 

Sarah slides the book back between them and flips to the front. Even though it’s spiral bound the front plastic page creaks when she opens it; rustling against the other pages of the book. “My folio. A key example of developed ideas, i.e. where my thinking started and where it progressed to. An integral part to our argument, wouldn’t you agree?” She shoots him a toothy haphazard grin and allows him five minutes to flick through the book before closing it, about half way through the look-in. “You see, if I only had the finished piece, it’s sort of like a maths equation,” Michael narrows his eyes slightly, not liking where she’s going with this. “It’s one thing that only shows one thing: what I finished with. Like the answer. There’s no delving into the hows or whys of the piece. It’s just as it is, nothing more.” It’s clear that she’s impressed with her own explanation, and Michael will admit that he’s pretty impressed to, but she’s got that kind of character that it’s almost expected, so his reaction is a little bit toned down.

He swipes his tongue across his bottom lip and considers her a moment. She’s smart. He’ll give her that. And... attractive. But not sensible. And certainly not correct. “Are you belittling maths?” He finally asks, level-headed and composed.

Sarah scoffs and rolls her eyes at him. “I’m _always_ belittling maths, Michael.” Her voice is precise this time; it actually sounds like her. He thought she was going to say ‘no’ though. “Don’t think that this is any different.” She adds, when he takes too long to reply.

The silence proceeding that seems to envelope them for a long while. Finally Michael takes in a loud breath, not relishing the murky air, thick with dry paint and whatever else they use in this godawful classroom. “Come on.”

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(12:37 pm)  **_where r u?_ **

(12:38 pm)  **_were supposed to meet after class to discuss what u have to do for the psych emotional diary thing_ **

(12:41 pm)  _shit_

(12:41 pm)  _ah kinda busy at the moment_

(12:43 pm)  **_what the hell?_ **

(12:43 pm)  **_MICHAEL_ **

(12:43 pm)  **_u can’t be serious_ **

(12:45 pm)  **_are you getting laid?_ **

(12:46 pm)  _no_

(12:47 pm)  **_then y aren’t you at lunch?_ **

(12:47 pm)  _busy_

(12:48 pm)  **_seriously who’s messing with your priorities?_ **

(12:48 pm)  **_sex and food are your 2 life necessities_ **

(12:48 pm)  **_in that order_ **

(12:49 pm)  **_where are you?_ **

(12:56 pm)  **_your with the art chick aren’t u?_ **

(12:57 pm)  **_dude_ **

(12:57 pm)  **_i could really use her help for the psych thing too_ **

(12:58 pm)  **_bring her along when ur done doing whatever it is that you’re doing_ **

(12:59 pm)  **_asap preferably_ **

###

“You dragged me all the way down to the Maths department? Are you serious?” Sarah asks, finally pulling her arm free from Michael’s grip—he’d dragged her the last five minutes between the Art department and here—and she scowls at him for doing so. “What’s so fantastic about this place anyway?”

The Maths department—while she’d never been here—looked nothing like the Art department. Instead of large open spaces, the area was divided into several classroom over two floors with a mezzanine retreat halfway up the stairs to the second floor. Many of the walls—instead of plaster—were made of glass, and the staircase was ‘floating’ against the wall. All in all, it wasn’t too much of an unpleasant space.

This time he takes her hand instead of grasping at her arm and tugs lightly until she decides herself to follow after him. He leads them upstairs and sits Sarah down on the couch in the mezzanine, opting for the armchair next to the couch. “I don’t know. Tell me, what’s so fantastic about this place Sarah?” He’s mocking her, trying to make her admit that this place is nice—but it’s not that simple. Why would it be anyway? Just because one, small aspect of a specifically broad subject persuade someone. Maybe, maybe if it was the turning point, but it’s not. It’s so far from it and they both know it. But maybe—

“This place is nice; obscure composition and emphasis on interesting points of the building. But I think the colour scheme is a bit bland, don’t you?” And just like that she’s wrecked his whole intention of convincing her that there was more merit in maths than in art just by showing her the Maths Department. 

He sighs and she stands from the couch. “Not my intention for you to scope the building out with an art perspective.” Michael mumbles while she looks out the window to an almost typical college setting; green grass, brick buildings, blue cloudy sky, students and teachers alike moving from place to place. 

Sarah purses her lips, turning back to face him and leaning on the window ledge. “Well what did you expect?” 

“I expected you to appreciate maths the same way I do.” He shrugs, standing also and leaning against the back of the couch to face her.

The laugh that resonates from her mocks him more than it should, even though he knew it was kind of expected. “I doubt, that that will ever happen.”

“Right, because you’re too opinionated to change your perspective.” He lets the last word hang around, now he’s mocking and being sarcastic only because he knows it’ll annoy her but she only shakes her head, not bothering to reply. They’ve had this specific conversation too many times over the past few months to be bothered repeating it right now. Michael sighs, “you can’t tell me that maths isn’t beautiful.” He says.

Her mouth drops open at that though. “What did you just say?”

“I said you can’t tell me that maths isn’t beautiful.”

“I heard what you said, just... why would you say something like that?”

“Well... take Euler’s identity for instance—” Now he’s got momentum and going somewhere and taking her by complete surprise and it’s all a lot to take in and talk about and necessary because this is what they do and this is how they do it, regardless of what anyone else says, it’s important to them.

“Eu-who?” Her eyebrow is quipped and she folds her arms almost arrogantly across her chest.

“Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician and he made lots of discoveries around the subject of infinitesimal calculus and graph theory—”

“So he’s a guy who did maths—” He scowls at her interpretation of the man while she frowns back at him. “Fine. Impressive maths. And that makes it beautiful, how?” She snaps.

“Well, probably because it’s so simple. I mean,” he grabs the nearest whiteboard marker, scrawling it onto the whiteboard taking up the length of the wall of the mezzanine.

She stares at it. And she stares at it some more. But for some reason she can’t see what’s so great about:e i\pi +1=0

“Why is that so great?” Sarah asks, cocking an eyebrow.

It looks like he’s about to burst a vein. Michael’s not angry per say, but annoyed that even she, an Art student, can’t appreciate the pure beauty of the equation in front of her. “Because it’s so perfectly balanced. Three basic arithmetic operations occur exactly once each: addition, multiplication, and exponentiation. The identity also links five fundamental mathematical constants—”

“This doesn’t turn you on, does it?” She interrupts, asking hopefully. He almost misses her bittersweet sarcastic smile to know that she’s joking. “Because there is no way I’m reciting this bullshit when we have sex.”

He chokes.

“I understand that you look at maths like a thing of beauty, but I loathe it.” She continues, ignoring his fit. “And I’m smart in my own way. If you can’t appreciate that then fine. But I still stand by art being more useful than maths and proving you wrong. Regardless of where that ends up.” Now she’s sashayed her way through the room, looking at the equations scrawled and half-erased on the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall whiteboard, partly impressed and otherwise confused. 

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(2:04 pm)  _when r u leaving?_

(2:05 pm)  **_30 mins_ **

(2:05 pm)  **_why??_ **

(2:06 pm)  _take me with u_

(2:06 pm)  _please_

(2:06 pm)  _she doesn’t_

(2:08 pm)  _CARE_

(2:09 pm)  **_wow_ **

(2:09 pm)  **_that took u way too long to figure out how to capitalise_ **

(2:11 pm)  _ur missing my point_

(2:11 pm)  _that she thinks maths is bullshit_

(2:11 pm)  **_ah_ **

(2:11 pm)  **_im calling switzerland on this one_ **

(2:12 pm)  _ let me come with u _

(2:13 pm)  **_no_ **

(2:13 pm)  _y not?_

(2:14 pm)  **_you have finals_ **

(2:14 pm)  _fuck finals_

(2:14 pm)  _i dont wanna be here_

(2:14 pm)  _u have finals too!_

(2:15 pm)  **_had my last yesterday_ **

(2:15 pm)  **_which is why im going today_ **

(2:16 pm)  _don’t leave me_

(2:23 pm)  **_bye michael_ **

(2:24 pm)  _fine_

(2:24 pm)  _say hi to your mum for me_

(2:27 pm)  **_yup will do_ **

###

“To be sure: this isn’t a date.” She clarifies, slinking into the chair opposite Michael. His eyebrow dips a little bit but he remains passive to her comment, especially because of how they left each other last time—awkward and unnecessary; but oddly endearing.

He clears his throat and pushes one of the two cups towards her. “I got you coffee.”

“You know me too well.” Sarah drawls, bringing the to-go cardboard cup up to her lips. But she sets it down almost immediately, eyes narrowed. “Is this—”

“Black coffee.” Michael says.

An unusual expression—unreadable to him—passes over her face. A mix of disgust, distaste and disdain. “I hate black coffee.”

“You have it the first time we met though.”

“Yeah, but I hated you then, and black coffee was cheap and quick.”

“So you associate me with black coffee and hatred.”

Sarah splutters and stares at him incredulously because why the hell would he consider it, then nods anyway because it is true and she isn’t the best at lying.

And it goes like this.

The next three days they argue about Maths and Art, scouting different places across the city to prove their points—because they have to broaden their horizons in order to have the appropriate amount amount of proof—then have coffee in the afternoons. They argue more than they agree. But it’s all purposeful, all to get on each other’s nerves.

He does the unspeakable then, but she isn’t surprised, not really. It was sort of expected, considering his _diverse_ range of expertise and skill set. 

“You wrote a bloody thesis on your fucking theory?” She exclaims, clutching at the half a dozen double-sided printed pages in her hand, staring in disbelief.

Michael does it to show off undoubtably. He looks proud of himself and nods once. “I did.”

“What the fuck—No, _why_ the fuck?” Sarah’s more scared for him than of him for the time being, this guy might actually be insane and wanting to pick a fight. Sure she was passionate, but he could be absolutely... mental.

Michael narrows his eyes slightly as she hands him back the paper tentatively—no, cautiously. “To prove that I was right, and that you were wrong.”

“Like we haven’t been doing that all week.” She exclaims, hands and teeth clenched. He doesn’t even think—worry—about making her angry anymore; it’s her default reaction to anything he even thinks of.

His face twitches and he grins back at her. “Yeah, we have, haven’t we?”

The brunette glares at him, eyes narrowed until they’re skewering him and then when she realises what he’s insinuated because of how careless she’d been with her grammar and how pernickety he was. Then, speechless for longer than she should have been, only blatant bewilderment is left. “You have got to be the biggest whack-job Maths-Chemistry student I’ve ever met.” Sarah decides finally. 

“I am the _only_ whack-job Maths-Chemistry student you have ever met.” He tries, a smug look edging his features.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I know people.” Sarah rolls her eyes at him earning a smirk from Michael.

“Right. Someone as bitchy and uptight as you knowing people? I doubt it.”

“Uptight? I’m not the one with the problem with me.”

“No, but you were the one who had to interrupt my conversation because you couldn’t stand being proved wrong.”

“You wouldn’t have even known anything was wrong with what you’d said if I hadn’t spoken up.”

“Oh yes, I’m totally distraught that you entered my life to tell me off about my opinion.”

Conversation absolutely oozing sarcasm they settle for tough silence before Sarah snatches back the paper; scanning the title which is unsurprisingly: ‘ _A foolproof way to prove the truth; Maths_ ’ which includes a quote by Galileo in the introduction and then bolded subheadings for each paragraph; sure to each include several statistics. It’s been edited, revised, rewritten, and read over too at least twice since Michael started writing it. “This is so typical of you.” Sarah mutters, rolling her eyes and throwing the paper in his general direction.

He pouts at her and slings an arm over her shoulders, hugging her close until he can almost smell her hair; sweet like—but no. “You’re just jealous because you can’t write a thesis.” He covers it with a quick scan around the courtyard as if to make certain that no one else saw his moment of foible. Relief leaves him in a huff of white breath in the grey atmosphere. Sarah’s scarf tickles the side of his face as she moves to push his arm off her.

“I’m not jealous of anything. But,” her voice catches on the wind. “If you seem so adamant that that’s why, then teach me.”

Michael’s face screws up and he pauses for a long moment. Definitely more cons than pros in this situation; best to avoid it. “You couldn’t handle it.”

She steps closer to him, hands bunching into her coat pockets. “Don’t challenge me Mr. Clifford. You should know better than that by now; I’m not afraid to do my best and prove what I know to be right.” 

It’s tempting to uphold his end of her proposed bargain, but he doesn’t have time to fidget or teach someone skills they’ll never use, plus he still has to freak out about his Organic Chemistry final in tomorrow, and then Christmas. Too much responsibility and then this; this girl with enough sass to accommodate a small village for a month. He shakes his head and scratches the nape of his neck. Sarah waits—blinks—expectantly. “How do you even have time for this kind of stuff?”

She shrugs. Just shrugs. The most nonchalant movement he’s ever seen her make. No emphasis necessary. Nothing else. Just. “Had my last final last week. This week’s been pretty free. Just finishing some Art History for stuff next term. Nothing major.” Her smile is jittery and Sarah adjusts her book bag on her shoulder to avoid eye contact even though she has nothing to hide or be embarrassed about but he feels it too and it’s prominent. It’s there, right there between them, and it makes him wonder if it’s been there long, maybe since they’d known each other. 

Instead of drawing more attention to it, he nudges her lightly while stuffing the paper into the open pocket of his backpack and seemingly forgetting about it. “How about coffee?”

Her returning smile is enough to melt the snow beginning to fall on the campus.

He bides his time for the rest of the afternoon studying for Organic Chemistry and leaving one-word replies to Sarah’s attempts of writing thesis’ via text message. A welcome distraction more than anything, despite the nagging feeling of procrastination.

That then develops into an overwhelming feeling that makes him want to be sick in the morning. Somehow, _somehow_ , she knows to show up. Calum answers the door, takes a moment to recognise her behind her green turtleneck sweater and thick grey scarf before letting her in hissing, “I wouldn’t recommend being here.”

But she knows. She knows he’s overreacting considering their conversation yesterday, so she even came armed with coffee—ready for anything.

Michael’s room is dark and she doesn’t bother to knock, rather pushing it open with her elbow. “I brought coffee. Get your ass up, clearly your roommate doesn’t care enough about you passing this, but here’s the thing: if you can type up a bunch of nothing for something you supposedly don’t care about then you can deal with this.” She announces, mentioning his thesis and flicking the light on with the side of her hand and promptly putting his coffee on his bedside table before pulling up the blind. 

“I’m pretty sure it’s tonsillitis.” His voice is barely registrable under the covers, but she can hear him loud and clear.

Sarah rolls her eyes at him. “You know I _have_ read that medical book you have stashed in your bag that you think I don’t know about.” She runs her tongue along her top teeth. “Hypochondriacs still have to sit Organic Chemistry finals. Drink up.”

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(11:15 am)  _did u know that she’s read my pocket copy of MedlinePlus?_

(11:17 am)  **_good for you_ **

(11:19 am)  **_i sometimes wish i had a girlfriend to read through my textbooks_ **

(11:19 am)  **_but then i think_ **

(11:19 am)  **_no_ **

(11:20 am)  **_that’s creepy dude_ **

(11:21 am)  **_why would she even do that_ **

(11:23 am)  **_did she even learn anything?_ **

(11:26 am)  _yeah_

(11:27 am)  _except now she thinks i’m just a compulsive hypochondriac_

(11:32 am)  **_which you r_ **

(11:36 am)  _shut up_

(11:36 am)  _she’s not my girlfriend_

(11:41 am)  _i’m gonna die_

(11:43 am)  **_y?_ **

(11:49 am)  _organic chem final now_

(11:53 am)  **_yep_ **

(11:54 am)  **_you r gonna die_ **

(11:55 am)  _how’s the weather up there?_

(11:55 am)  **_better than the stuff youve been having that u call snow_ **

(11:55 am)  **_we’re almost a foot in_ **

(11:56 am)  _snowed in?_

(11:56 am)  _dammit if we were snowed in i wouldn’t have to sit this final_

(11:58 am)  _!!!_

###

It’s green. It’s also clean-cut and fresh. And strapless and tight and lacy and fucking green. It’s so _Ellise_ that it’s not Sarah.

“Oh what are you looking at?” Sarah asks cruelly, but her voice is missing something. He supposes that’s what Christmas Eve does to people, considering plenty of people aren’t going home for the the Christmas break and family is definitely a big part of his life.

Michael opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything for a moment, looking her up and down; he hasn’t seen that much leg on a girl in a long time. His eyes continue to trail up and up her dress, pausing again on her breasts, the dress moulded to them perfectly. Then he traces out her collarbones with his eyes and then stops at her face and an unappreciative, grim... look. “You make that dress look divine.” He murmurs instead, taking her by complete surprise leaving her wide-eyed and in his grasp. She only wanted to make a sarcastic comment about looking like a Christmas tree, but this... this isn’t what that was. 

He doesn’t compliment her. Correction: he _never_ compliments her. Sure she was expecting flirtation, but not sincerity. That’s a whole other level of drama and arguments and agreements and shit she doesn’t have time for.

Her eyes match the dress. He thinks Ellise has done it on purpose—of course she has, she doesn’t do much without reason. 

But she’s speechless and bewildered and then... and then angry. But not, it’s missing _something._ “I... it’s a... Christmas... green... tree...” She huffs, looking around behind her to where Ellise had disappeared to, but isn’t there. Sarah’s not surprised, not really. “I... thank you.” She drops whatever grudge against the dress she’d held and feigned a smile at him. Michael knows she hates it, so what point is there in telling him so herself?

“Come on, let’s get you a drink.” He slings his arm across her shoulders in an almost casual manner—compared to what just happened.

Her usual resentment is chased away with three drinks and a warm, happy smile radiates from her as she bashfully bumps her shoulder into Michael. He can’t stop looking at her though. And maybe she’ll tell him off for it later and say something about _perspective_ and they’ll laugh and, and... 

Sarah rambles on about snow for twenty minutes and by the time she’s done there’s a small crowd eagerly listening to her pre-drunken rant. Her smile captivates them all and she shakes her head looking out the kitchen window and lopsidedly shoots a look to Michael. He thinks it’s intimate and tries to feel indifferent about the fact that she always looks like that when she’s drunk. 

This isn’t loud like the last party they were at—no, this is subtle and sensuous. 

People start to flake away when she stops talking. Michael scoots in closer to her as she rests her chin in her hand, staring at him dubiously. 

“What?” He asks softly. 

He’s close enough to that he can feel the huff of air she lets out as she rolls her eyes. “Perspective.” Sarah draws the word out slowly. His leg brushes hers under the bench and their upper arms are pressed together on the bench top. There it is. The word. They’ll argue now and he’ll laugh about it later, admiring the way she persists with her useless argument and he’ll declare himself the winner and she’ll frown and they’ll argue all over again because it’s easier that way, simpler—more practical if anything. Then they don’t have to worry about feelings or lines mixing and emotions dancing, smiles, feather-weight touches, reticent glances, secret kisses—fuck. He’s in too far.

“What?” Michael repeats, so conscious of everything and everyone and her, her, _her_. No way. No, she wouldn’t be tied down by him. She wouldn’t let him have a handle on her and call her his. She didn’t belong to him and never would. She’d never let him.

Sarah’s look flickers that of sober, but softens up and she brushes it off as nothing more than a lapse in conversation. “I said,” she continues, equally as alluring as before. “Perspective.”

But now he doesn’t know how to act. Michael can’t just give a spiel on maths. It’s not working. Maybe, maybe if he just kisses her it’ll make things better. Clear it up for both of them. But it’s only him that needs the reminder. Sarah has no problem with their current relations; friends who flirt and chat and get coffee and and and everything friends do. 

(Like go on wild and ridiculous dates around the city where they look at each other like oil paintings and talk like sentences are made up of equations in which replies are always the right answer. Yeah. Everything _friends_ do.)

He doesn’t kiss her though. Trust _him_ to chicken out of the available moment. But she takes his hand instead and slides off the stool, making sure he follows her.

Drunk, she tugs him to the living room where something somehow resembling dancing is going on. She makes him move with her—more amusing than seductive—and she takes his other hand and a tipsy smile coats her face; warm, pink cheeks and bright eyes. The green dress isn’t even a problem anymore; she’s too drunk to care and he’s too nice to mention it—but also too awkward about it to say anything because of the reaction to his compliment earlier.

They don’t dance for long, the song changes and the beat, the mood, the atmosphere goes with it, then she’s less mesmerising and more reluctant, shooting shy smiles his direction as they drift from the living room to the breakfast room—because there’s so much room for rooms at Luke’s parents’ place.

She sits along the bay window bordering the room and Michael follows, sitting next to her. “Are you spending Christmas with Ellise?” He asks, leaning back against the window sill.

“No, she’s heading home tomorrow morning. So I’ll call my mum after breakfast and then see what happens I guess.” Sarah adjusts her dress, hitching it up with her thumbs and folding her arms over her chest. “What about you?”

“I’m going to my parents’ place for lunch, they only live around the corner from here. You’re more than welcome to come along if you’re not planning on doing anything.” He takes in a small breath of air. “You shouldn’t have to be alone on Christmas.”

A wry smile pulls over her face. “You don’t have to do that. It’s your family and your Christmas, I don’t want to ruin that for you.”

Michael shakes his head and checks his phone before turning back to her. He feels tired suddenly and sleepy and fuzzy and maybe it’s the alcohol because in no way is it the weather; just above freezing on the other side of the glass behind them. He sighs. “You wouldn’t ruin it, no matter how much we’d argue. My parents surely wouldn’t mind.”

Leaning forward, she rests her elbows on her knees, holding her chin in her palm. “Seeing as you don’t seem to be able to take no for an answer, I’ll think about it.” 

He nods and they settle into a chilly quiet. Michael thinks to get another drink, but he doesn’t want to make things more awkward—because clearly he’s already stuffed up his night because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and she wasn’t prepared for it anyway and now... now... _now_ he doesn’t know what to do because he wants to kiss her. He’s spent the better part of a semester pining over her and acting ridiculous because they’re _not_ in a relationship, they’re not in an anything really. Friendship doesn’t really even describe... whatever this is. Yet they act like they’ve been going out for months and treat each other like enemies and argue and the _tension_ , the tension surely kills her as much as it kills him. Doesn’t it?

But she won’t look at him with the same endearing refuge as he does her. But to kiss her, just once... just once and hold her and—

“Hey, it’s Christmas eve, relax would you?” She grins at him, in low-light and rests the side of her hand on his knee(a completely harmless gesture (to her)), looking at him like she’s concerned, and then she rolls her eyes and smirks. Fucking smirks. Fucking plays with his fucking heart strings; a puppeteer—drawing him along, further and further. Not even in an evil way, just continuously, no end anywhere that he can see.

Yeah. _Yeah_. It’s Christmas eve, he should just tell her how he feels and get over it. Yeah. That’ll make everything better. “Dance with me then.” He offers out his hand, pushing himself from the bench in the breakfast room letting her hand slide off his leg.

The hesitation evident on Sarah’s face almost makes him take back his suggestion; _almost_. She stands on her own and meekly—no, she’s not shy, what... why... she’s not scared is she—takes his hand and despite the whole head-banging music pulsing through the building they don’t move to it. There’s something quaint about their movement— _their_ moment—no one’s heart is racing and the steps are kind of clumsy but they’re both a little bit intoxicated and it’s dark and cold in the breakfast room with walls of glass to let the light in in the morning. 

Her edge is gone when she finally looks at him. Sharp green eyes against sharper green eyes. But no attitude or sass. Michael isn’t sure who’s more unnerved right now, right here. “You know my favourite feature of you?” He asks, breath puffing in her face and Sarah laughs—her smile helps him breathe easier, warm and bright—she hopes, prays, that it’s not her breasts (although she’s sure they’ll be one of his top five).

Michael reaches up from where his hands are holding hers and taps her lip. “This. Your bottom lip. It’s so nice, and round and pink.” He’s not looking her in the eye anymore, he’s staring so intently at her lip and she can feel his breath on her face and his eyes finally catch hers and her heart’s racing _now_ , and he wants to kiss her, kiss her, kiss—she beats him to it. 

He can hear his heart beating in his ears. Her hands settle on his shoulders; his on her waist. They seem to draw each other even closer, closer, _closer_ together. Lapsing perfectly with each other, slowly like the falling snow outside.

When her eyes fly open he knows—can feel it—sinking in all the wrong places. She shoves herself backwards with a harsh push against his shoulders. Sarah doesn’t even say anything. But her eyes are so wide he can see all of her forest-green irises so it’s... wrong: what he’s done. 

And she’s breathless but not from the kiss and she’s panicked. Scared, terrified, afraid, nervous, _brittle_. Doe-eyed and wheezy and side-steps towards the door leading into the house, not taking her eyes off Michael. “I don’t—” She abruptly cuts herself off(high-pitched and whinny) and steals away inside, disappearing into the crowd of people in the living room. 

He didn’t fail to notice the way her hands shook when she realised what was happening.

###

Messages: With:  **Princess [(763) 583...]**

(10:23 am)  _merry christmas_

(10:27 am)  _hope ur having a nice day_

(11:13 pm)  _good night_

(11:14 pm)  _sleep well_

###

New Years is worse. Everyone had disappeared from the face of the Earth on the days between Christmas and New Years Eve but reappeared just in time for the raging party held at Michael’s. 

She’s wearing grey. It looks bitter on her and makes her seem lonely and single and distressed all to the point that she makes it look sexy. Her makeup is smudged beyond repair and her hair is wild with wind and curls and frizz. From a vague distance it looks like she’s been crying and messy, but up close—well, as close as Michael is—she looks devilish, and a shit-ton more like herself. 

It’s 11:35 when she arrives. Everyone else is well and truly drunk by now, but she just stands there, in the doorway watching with hooded eyes as half a dozen people sing something of a cappella version of Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez’s ‘Start of Something New’ near the kitchen and some out-of-hand game of beer pong between a set of twins Sarah doesn’t remember the names of and Christine in her Art History class with her boyfriend. 

Michael hollers at her from the bottom of the stairs, but she doesn’t even register him in her scope of the party, trying to find a familiar face that isn’t half-drunk or wound up against someone else in the living room. He pushes through a team of volleyball players no one seems to know, over to where she is standing and her eyes catch his after he waves at her maniacally a few more times. Something about the way she hadn’t said anything or moved from where she started makes Michael wonder what happened, and why she didn’t arrive with anyone else—or arrive earlier with Ellise.

Maybe she’s still mad about what happened on Christmas Eve. There was certainly no Christmas text message the following day, and Michael was too scared to mention it now. It had taken him far too long to realise that he should have been afraid of her to begin with. He’d only been awestruck the first time she’d spoken to him, but Luke—Luke had the right idea. He should have listened to him. It was far too late for that now.

He stops inside her comfort zone and he knows this because of how she meekly lets her shoulders drop, same with her gaze. Michael should say sorry. At least.

“Have you seen Ellise? Or Luke?” She speaks first. Her pitch is off, and she rolls her wrists uncomfortably. Sarah’s too calm.

“Umm—”

“Or Calum? Even Calum would be better to fucking talk to than you.” Then she snaps. This is normal. He can deal with this. Michael can tell her to shut up and let her argue back at him and put them both at ease for a while and completely ignore the topic of what happened six nights ago.

He rolls his eyes at her. Her jaw clenches. His eyes skim over her again, just for the sake of her watching. Her wrists stop twisting and curl into fists. He runs his tongue across the inner side of his bottom lip. Her eyes narrow. He wonders how long it would take for her to catch him in the heels she’s wearing. Probably not long, he decides, since she wears them all the time. She tilts her head to the side and brushes passed him, like she hadn’t even seen him. And just like that, everything he’d hoped _wouldn’t_ happen, happens.

Michael wants to follow her. Of course. _Of course_. He wants her to talk to him. He wants her to be mad, or something or—shit, he doesn’t care what. But not this. Not this stupid thing that had nothing to do with anything. He wants her to yell and argue and be loud and bossy and bitchy like she almost always is. But Christmas is too recent to forget the way she had practically melted into his embrace far too early into the night and then stampeded away the moment she recognised what she was doing. But it’s his fault. And she’ll continue to blame him because it made her uncomfortable, even though _she_ kissed _him_ first.

The remaining twenty minutes before midnight drag with bad intentions; his Rolex even seems to be ticking slower—the _damn_ thing—and he watches while everyone seems to be having a good time but him because he’s in pain and she’s having a better time than _Van Wilder_ because she can and she goes to college and she’s fucking independent which makes him helpless—or worse; _dependent_.

When he does approach her, it’s 11:56pm, and her smile doesn’t disappear immediately like he thinks it will, but when it does he crumples just a little bit more.

“Will you at least kiss me at midnight?” If he takes the cocky approach, maybe he’ll have a chance and she will go along with it and then it’ll be as if nothing happened and they can go on calling each other out on stupid nothings and they won’t look at each other with caution and disdain and maybe affection. 

“Why would I do that?”

“Because—”

“I won’t make the same mistake twice.” Then it really hits him, hurts too, like a bitch. Michael’s chest deflates more and his posture skews slightly—not enough for her to see, but enough. 

Around them the hype is off the wall and there’s major exhilaration and tension is being heightened in the best way. He doesn’t bother to count the seconds between her breaths because he can’t hear them; his heavyset features tell that instead he’s more concerned with what to say next, but neither of them speak. Sarah only remains passive to further comments, yet doesn’t move off from the spot in the living room.

Midnight concretes her feelings. They don’t kiss. 

Then someone shakes him into being with a loud ‘ _Happy New Year_ ’ cheered over everyone else’s. Michael thinks it’s Luke, but on further inspection it’s Adam; Luke’s roommate. This confuses Michael, and it takes him a moment too long before he realises that Sarah’s disappeared from where she had been standing in front of him. And then he can’t find her, but he shouldn’t be surprised; he was surprised when she’d shown up, thinking that she wouldn’t even do that.

He finds Luke, in a possibly predictable place, but one that had been secretive until now. “Called it.” Michael hollers when he catches a glance at Luke and Ellise under the gazebo and points manically out the window.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(12:32 am)  **_have you guys even passed first base yet?_ **

(12:34 am)  **_??_ **

(12:39 am)  **_like_ **

(12:39 am)  **_you’ve been going out for three months now_ **

(12:40 am)  **_right_ **

(12:43 am)  _stop analysing the fuck out of our relationship_

(12:44 am)  _and doing your psychology thing on us_

(12:44 am)  _stop it_

(12:56 am)  **_it’s not like she cares_ **

###

Michael resents her for three days. He then resents himself for four. Calum has put with Michael’s resentment all week.

Luke brings beer when he returns from his shift at K-Mart and tells Calum to sod off on Michael for a while so he can get over himself. Michael drinks five from the six pack Luke brought over and doesn’t say a word to Luke about it. Luke doesn’t entirely expect him to, but he is annoyed at this stage.

Calum arrives back and nods at Luke who sees Cassie standing just outside the apartment. He thinks Calum must have told her what was up with Michael because of it, and decides that Michael’s had enough time to mope. 

“We’re getting pizza. You coming?” Luke asks, pushing the door to Michael’s room ajar. He isn’t surprised to find him lounging in a pile of his own misery with his limited collection of _The Police_ playing from his laptop, deposited next to him at his desk.

“No.”

Unsurprised by this, Luke persists. “Movie later then?”

“Nah.”

“Michael?”

“Mmm?”

“Talk to her.”

“What?”

“You and her... work well together.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know what happened or anything, or if it was an accident, or whose fault it is, but, she... you’re good for her. Talk to Sarah, Michael—”

“Fuck off Luke—”

The blonde boy leaves, letting the door swing shut with; “It’ll be good for both of you.”

Michael’s a clusterfuck of emotions. Because he sits there, wondering how he got there. How the fuck did he get his heart broken by someone who had next to no interest in him? How did _he_ end up here? Raised to be the perfect child, to do the right things and speak when he was spoken to and not to point or talk over someone—apparently all of those things just went out the window when he met her. And now he has _CAUTION_ tape around him and being held together by less than a memory and he can’t, he _can’t_ , he can’t—

Goddammit.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(3:23 pm)  **_get over ur self_ **

(3:23 pm)  **_ellise told me to tell you that_ **

(3:24 pm)  **_and that sarah is annoying her too_ **

(3:24 pm)  **_so how about u two meet up and sort things out_ **

(3:25 pm)  **_because_ **

(3:25 pm)  **_u aren’t the only ones ur both annoying_ **

(3:28 pm)  _wow_

(3:28 pm)  _how diplomatic_

(3:31 pm)  **_not sure if ur being sarcastic_ **

(3:32 pm)  **_im presuming you are_ **

(3:32 pm)  **_but like_ **

(3:33 pm)  **_what is the worst thing that could happen?_ **

(3:33 pm)  **_honestly_ **

(3:35 pm)  _she could hate me forever_

(3:37 pm)  **_well with the way you’re currently going she does_ **

(3:37 pm)  **_so change it_ **

(3:38 pm)  _right_

(3:38 pm)  _so i just walk up to her and say sorry_

(3:42 pm)  **_well it’s a start_ **

(3:42 pm)  **_and if you don’t_ **

(3:42 pm)  **_ellise is gonna hunt u down_ **

(3:43 pm)  **_she says she knows where u live so..._ **

(3:54 pm)  _real threatening like_

###

He approaches her the way one should approach a lion; with brazen. When he sees her, she’s waiting in line for coffee—of course—with her back to him, her posture is immaculate and her hair limp, finishing at her shoulders. Brazen because one should not approach a lion initially; it is foolish. And brazen because one must have insane levels of courage to approach a lion.

She’s gorgeous and her hair’s fuzzy and everywhere being held back by a white cotton headband and she’s—“What the hell?”—aggressively fucking _blinking_ at him as he stops her by holding his arm out in front of her. “Leave me alone.” Sarah mutters, glancing away from him.

“Talk about civil.” Michael muses. Then continues when she stays quiet. “Do you mind if I have coffee with you?”

It must be the wording of his question that throws her off kilter. She physically jerks to the side and stares at him, haphazardly and then wide; murderous, killer, fierce. “What?” It’s loud and high-pitched and antsy. But Sarah doesn’t jump or flinch anymore than that. 

“Can I have coffee with you?” Michael repeats. She isn’t murdering him like the way she’s looking at him. In fact, he thinks she’s more surprised that he wasn’t being hostile than him being polite. 

It’s like somebody reaches inside her then and flicks the ‘bitch switch’ then and her face curves downwards. “Why?” It’s a necessary precautionary that comes with being sensitive and brittle.

He puffs out his cheeks, wondering how this is going to benefit him because he’ll get over her if things do go sour—maybe. Sure it’ll take time and beer and at least four seasons of _How I Met Your Mother_ , but—

“Do you have a point to make or can I continue ignoring your existence?” She quips, dipping an unimpressed eyebrow.

“You know, if you were ignoring my existence then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He blurts before stopping to think that maybe he should stop messing around and pay attention to at least 80% of what he’s saying. If she was unimpressed before, then she is disappointed now. “Uh—don’t... what I meant to say was: I would like to have coffee with you. Not as a date. Not as an anything really. Just, sit down and drink coffee.”

Her gaze is icy and it physically hurts him, but he can hear the enamel on her teeth squeak and she flashes him the smallest of forgiving looks. He joins her in line for coffee.

They sit and she sips her coffee, just like he said they would. Sarah barely spares him a glance, let alone a look in his general direction.

“So are we going to talk about it?” He finally asks. It’s cold, where they’re sitting. It’s a white wrought iron table off to the side of one of the courtyards near the big Lecture Hall, with matching chairs. Sarah makes it look more like a throne.

She blinks and rolls her neck loose. “I thought you said we weren’t going to do that.” And he truly is surprised by how civil she’s being, and acting, and speaking. Because neither of them can be better than the other. They aren’t good at letting that happen.

He barely pauses. “Well what did you expect would happen?”

Her lips pucker slightly as she sets her coffee cup down. The wind flutters her hair against her jaw before she tucks it behind her ear. Michael assumes that she’s just going to shut him down right there, and if he was lucky she would only pour her coffee on him—but she didn’t do that last time she’d considered it(not that he knew that). Finally, in all seriousness she looks at him. Looks like she’s trying to work him out. Like she’s trying to know his motivation. “I didn’t want to get attached or let there be any feelings, okay? But I wasn’t the one who made you fall for me.” Her bluntness shouldn’t surprise him at this stage; it’s not like she’s ever held back how she’s felt before, why start now?

That’s not what really surprises him though. What it is, is that she knew—she knew for so long. How long? Sarah probably knew that he had fallen for her before he knew about it.

“It was you.” He firstly accuses. “You and your pompous opinion and snarky remarks and, and—I’m not attached.”

She rolls her eyes at that, a smile—which would be welcome, but considering the circumstances is more of a warning—playing on her lips. “Right,” she mocks, devilish looks running freely. “You’re _so_ not attached, Michael.”

###

Messages: With:  **Princess [(763) 583...]**

(11:19 am)  **_What exactly do you want?_ **

(11:27 am)  _you_

(11:29 am)  _for a really fucking long time_

###

Michael can see the surprise on Sarah’s face when Calum opens the door to her that afternoon. Michael’s sitting at the bench in the kitchen eating fruit loops when it happens—regardless of the fact that it’s three in the afternoon also that he hasn’t bothered to get dressed, and is wearing those black sating pyjama pants again.

Calum knows how to take a hint and lets her step in first before rounding her and shutting the door behind him as he leaves.

They’re not sure who’s the more pathetic one in this case. Michael is half naked. Sarah is shifting uncomfortably in one spot.

“Should I... not have shown up?” She asks finally, in one breathy sentence avoiding eye contact and choosing to focus on the grout between the tiling on the floor and how it’s not floorboards or anything similar which is weird because it makes the floor cold and a really bright shade of white. She blinks and looks at him instead. 

He shakes his head and puts his empty bowl in the sink. “So you’ve come to your senses?”

A sharp cough rattles off her chest. “Hardly.” Sarah isn’t much different than before; utterly bitter. But if she’s here now, then she certainly had come to some sense; even if it wasn’t the precise one Michael wanted to change.

“So you’re still going to stand by your whole ‘ _I’m a bitch and everything is the way I say it is_ ’ act?” He asks sourly.

“In an ideal world Michael, yes.” Sarcasm rolls off her tongue as easily as she breathes and it isn’t until now that he realises that she probably can’t even differentiate between sarcasm and colloquialism which is why she’s always so sharp. “But I am sorry.” This is quiet—soft even—with rounded edges and even curves. Like landing gently and planting two feet on the ground with a definitive step similar to getting off a plane after a long flight. “I’m not going to not be bitter about this. I’m still more mad at you about this than I am myself, which is why I’m sorry.”

He swallows, realising his palms are sweaty and he’s nervous, but he’s not going to muck this up—he doesn’t think he will at least. Because of all the things that could go wrong... well they’ve already happened, so now there’s a pause a slowness to his movements even his thinking. Michael sighs, “I’m sorry too...” A thousand more words wouldn’t complete what he is trying to say. But he figures she understands what he’s trying to say when her hand brushes his, and she’s standing next to him while he stares blankly at the bowl in the sink. 

The next hour is spent going through the motions of them admitting that they were foolish and kind of arrogant (both hinting that other was more so than themselves) before it was suggested that they move from the kitchen bench. 

Her smile is as playful as her words are then. Is she flirting? Of course she is. From the way she rolls her eyes to how she strums her nail-bitten fingers against his desk in his room. My god, she’s in his room. On his _bed_. Beaming at him as he tells her something that shouldn’t be as funny as she laughs at it like.

It doesn’t help that she flops back, chest heaving with laughter and he tries— _tries_ —not to envisage her there at night, every night, curled up against him while he runs a hand down her spine and she smiles at him before she goes to sleep. And he wants to sleep with her in both senses of the word. It’s thrilling; it’s dangerous.

Sarah sighs and rolls onto her stomach and she stops laughing. He can feel her judging him—not in a harsh way—even through her innocent eyes. Magnetic, he feels it pull him in, pull her, pull them both closer together. And _then_ she smiles. “You have really pretty eyes.” The comment isn’t even negative, but his whole demeanour shrinks. It’s moments like this; when everything is picturesque and about to fall perfectly into place—too picturesque.

He doesn’t blame her, it just happens like that.

Maybe she isn’t flirting at all.

Maybe she _is_ being solely friendly.

Maybe she doesn’t care about him.

Maybe... maybe... maybe.

Sarah twitches and swats his shoulders. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That zoning thing where you don’t focus.” She scolds and rolls her eyes before holding out her left hand to him. He stares at it for a couple of seconds before she shudders—laughing. “Thumb war.” She indicates, gesturing her hand towards him.

Michael still frowns and bats her hand away with his own. “I’m right-handed.”

She considers this, he sees. Her lower lip retracting between her teeth and eyes wandering off for a moment, but not closing. “We’ll take it in turns if you’re so adamant about being fair.” Then she swaps hands so that her right is between them.

They play best of three and he lets her win the third match but she demands a rematch. “You let me win.”

“And if I did?” He questions, smug caricatures melded to him. 

Sarah’s whole face crumples and she pulls herself half an arm’s length closer to him—so close that he can smell her musky sweet perfume, that he hadn’t noticed before—and sighs. “That’s not fair.” She speaks slowly, but pointedly; not trying to figure him out this time, just anticipating his next move and then she’s pulling her legs up underneath herself until she’s sitting with her legs crossed on his bed while he still lies on his stomach in front of her.

“You’re right.” Michael thinks about her heels kicked off at the end of his bed, her coat and scarf on the kitchen bench, her bag in the living room. He moves himself so that he too is sitting upright; his knees bumping hers.

She doesn’t shift away.

When he leans forwards slightly, she doesn’t move backwards. “If I kiss you now, will you run away again?”

An instant flashes in her eyes. Michael’s nervous because _fuck_ , she could say no and ruin whatever the hell he’s got going. It’s momentum, this momentum all his own right now. A thundering train—an _express_ train—going places, seeing things, but if someone changes the tracks on him, he could go straight off the rails—

“No. I won’t go.” This isn’t the same kiss. This isn’t stupid and reckless. Nervous or amateur. This _is_ controlled. Maybe not structured, but they’re mediating their actions this time. A somber, calming feeling washes over him as his hands fall in her hair and he grips her—not in a ‘ _scared to lose her_ ’ kind of way, but a ‘ _this is important_ ’ kind of way—holds her close. And Sarah’s warm; warm lips, warm breath, warm body, warm grasp. And all over the place; her lips get sloppy against his, and he can feel the tendons in her neck quiver as he slides his hand down her throat stopping at her shoulder junction. 

There’s a shift—a change in the atmosphere; it ripples and resonates between them both and her eyes dart open but she doesn’t push away from him. No.

Now she’s what he always thought she was. Greedy hands, mouth, tongue, teeth—everywhere, everywhere all at once and it’s a feeling he’s been craving for too long to think about and, and, and she pins him down against the mattress and there’s lust; lust and... something else. He doesn’t dwell on it.

It’s a lot of rough and tumble then—a fight for dominance that they both want so badly.

It’s like lightning; how they move. It’s sharp and vivid. Fingernails scratching and bruises on her thighs, bite marks decorating his jugular and a heavy motion; a flurry of movement then slow and thick and victorious. And he stutters, falters, momentarily. “Of course you have a tattoo.” He murmurs, letting his lips trace the hummingbird inked under her left collar bone. Besides all the taunting, all the gracelessness of the moment, their underlying temperament is still so bitterly apparent.

And she grits her teeth because she’s too damn stubborn about what she’s feeling—how she’s feeling—and her eyes clench shut, but Michael’s drawing his lips away from her neck and mumbling in a numbing voice, “Princess, princess look at me, eyes open, there, there sweetheart. Hmm, right there?”

And—fuck; her toes curl over and a feeble whimper leaves her, some slur ending with, “... princess,” followed by something that could have been a laugh but her back arches and she gasps, her hand curling around his shoulder and she holds herself there, for a drawn out, tantalising moment; a single, shaky breath released against Michael’s skin.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(5:05 pm)  **_have u talked to her yet?_ **

(5:07 pm)  **_because ellise is worried cause she can’t find sarah_ **

(5:10 pm)  **_u didn’t like_ **

(5:10 pm)  **_upset her_ **

(5:13 pm)  **_right?_ **

(8:24 pm)  **_OH_ **

(8:24 pm)  **_NEVER MIND_ **

(8:25 pm)  **_READ YOUR TEXT MESSAGES_ **

(8:28 pm)  **_BECAUSE A WARNING IS ALWAYS WELCOME_ **

###

“Why a hummingbird?” His voice is croaky and eyes are still half shut but his fingers find the tattoo like he’d already memorised her body (which he had spent an ideal amount of time doing last night).

Sarah sighs and he feels her shrug against him. “Why not? I mean sure, it’s because I can be annoying like a hummingbird because they’re so constant and whatnot, but their consistency is melodic.”

Michael grins into her hairline. “That was deep.”

“I’m an art student, Michael.” That in itself is explanation enough.

Because seriously, who wouldn’t want to wake up like this every morning? He’s not hungover, not in someone else’s bed, not alone, and not in bad company. 

She looks up at him, anticipation wild in her eyes. Her eyeliner has smudged down from the corners of her eyes, creating a reverse cat-eye look and making her look more tired than she is. “Are you asking for my panties now?” She quizzes, flashing him a toothy grin and brushing his nose against her own.

He laughs at the memory and nods. “I guess I am.” Before pressing his mouth to her own briefly.

There’s a silence then, eyes trained on each other. Not awkward. Not subtle. More intimate than sex even—he’s sure of it. Where hearts aren’t racing and they’re completely conscious of what they’re saying and doing; arousal not clouding their senses. This is honest.

Her phone jingles, disturbing the quiet and Michael can feel the breath of air she releases against him—not of relief—that of contentedness, and damn if it isn’t the snap, crackle, pop of a firecracker or the fizzle of soft drink and warmth from a candle all in one instant. Sarah shifts to check her phone from the bedside table, only reading over it, not replying and turning back to face him; body flush against his.

“Do you want coffee?” He almost laughs at her suggestion.

“Sure.” Sleep is still thick in his voice but he’s glad he’s awake for this.

Slipping from the bed, Sarah pulls on the top Michael had left discarded on the floor earning a choice stare from him as she pushes back the covers, passing through the doorway into the hall. 

When he follows, he forgets about putting socks on, so the floorboards are cold underfoot, but it’s not match to the shock he finds at the end of the hallway. There, standing at the end of the butcher block, mouth open wide and eyebrows creased is Calum. He doesn’t see Michael immediately.

Calum’s staring at her. Sarah’s staring back.

“Well...” Calum starts but clearly has no intention of continuing with anything that was reasonably reasonable. He couldn’t really say anything that wouldn’t get him shunned or _skewered_ or negatively affected.

She clears her throat and turns back to the sink, finishing filling up the kettle. “Do you want a coffee?” Once she’s set the kettle down, subtly, she readjusts the top she had on—barely brushing her thighs.

He nods, clearing his throat, averting his eyes from her scantily clad form to see Michael, equally as confused and just as bewildered looking back. They don’t speak. Calum clamps his jaw shut so hard they all hear his teeth squeak on impact. To Michael, it’s just as bad as being caught in the act. 

Sarah doesn’t turn around when she asks how Calum takes his coffee. Black with one sugar. She makes them all coffee without any eye contact and then, _then_ , Calum slinks back to his room with a curt, “Thank you,” making sure to shut the door loudly enough to know that he won’t be back out until she’s gone plus half an hour. 

“Well that was—”

“Unexpected.” He cuts in, nursing his mug close to him, eyes hooded but still surprised. 

She glances at him. “I was going to say awkward.”

“That too.”

“He wasn’t here all night was he? Like, he left when I arrived, so when did—”

“That whole Maths-Art thing is over, right?” Truthfully, he doesn’t care or want to know when Calum got back, despite the fact that Sarah seemed unnecessarily worried about it.

There’s a pause. A pregnant pause. It seems to draw out longer and when he finally looks up, she’s staring back at him as if he’s spoken fluent German; out of context and uncalled for.

“Of _course_ not.” She declares, voice haughty and pitched. “I still have a string of arguments which I plan on discussing in depth with you at some stage, preferably when I’m not drunk or turned on because that just throws off the whole attitude I’ve got going.” 

Michael laughs before he can help himself and she’s pouting at him sourly. “I totally agree with you,” he mutters, gesturing to her and taking a few steps into the kitchen, setting his mug down on the bench. “That you completely lose focus when you have more important things to... _deal_ with.”

The eye roll she shoots back is surely enough to give her a headache as she sips her coffee. 

He thinks to ask about where that puts them—relationship-wise—where the whole night leaves them. Because the thing is, she hasn’t left him. She was there, in the morning. She still is here; right in front of him, having coffee and dismissing his roommate like he would do any other day. Shit; does she think this is serious? Does _he_ think this is serious? 

There’s an uncomfortable lump in his throat, and he just... stops. He stops worrying for a split-second. Because maybe, maybe that’s it. Maybe she’ll leave and they won’t talk about it again or see each other again or think about each other or worry—but maybe they will. 

A heavy-set crease forms between his eyebrows but Sarah hasn’t really been paying enough attention to that to make an uncalled-for comment at present. So when he slinks over to the sink to wash out his mug she stands next to him, so that her whole left side is pressed to his right and she says in the lowest of tones—that to challenge even him: “You know, I would have at least thought you’d be dignified enough to buy me dinner before you slept with me.”

He looks down at her. “This wasn’t a one-time thing, was it?” Michael guesses, quipping an eyebrow as she shakes her head, smiling—it makes this feel like a dream, really it does; that he could have something this good and have it be real.

“I didn’t think it would be.” Turning, Sarah leans back against the sink once she’d rinsed her mug. Precariously, he steps around her until he has one leg either side of her, barricading her to the bench.

He smirks thinly. “Just making sure.” And kisses her again. She pulls him in closer and he understands how ridiculous he’s being. Of course this isn’t a one-time thing. It’s too good to happen once. And he would do it all over, just have it again. All of it. 

“Right.” She drawls, pulling away with a soft smile. “So then pretty boy, when are we having dinner?”

“I have a better idea.”

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(10:23 am)  **_what do u get ur girl friend fro christmas??_ **

(10:34 am)  _y r u asking me?_

(10:34 am)  _i don’t have a girlfriend_

(10:34 am)  _...officially_

(10:34 am)  _i think_

(10:35 am)  _i dunno_

(10:36 am)  _and its way past christmas_

(10:37 am)  **_!!!_ **

(10:37 am)  **_MCIHAEL!!!_ **

(10:37 am)  **_we only thought you were screwing_ **

(10:37 am)  **_but_ **

(10:38 am)  **_!!!_ **

(10:40 am)  _WE?!?_

(10:41 am)  **_me and ellise knew that much_ **

(10:42 am)  _u guys keep tabs on us_

(10:42 am)  _y?_

(10:43 am)  **_but christmas!!!_ **

(10:43 am)  **_like perfume_ **

(10:43 am)  **_or movie tickets_ **

(10:43 am)  **_or coupons for like breakfast and backrubs_ **

(10:44 am) **_??_ **

(10:57 am)  _WAIT_

(10:57 am)  _I FUCKING CALLED IT_

(10:58 am)  _:O_

###

His hand rests on her knee the whole drive up to his parents’ house out on the cape. Sarah’s skin is warm, soft and smooth against his calloused fingertips. They decide to spend the last few days of winter break away at his parents’ holiday house. Before that they spend nearly every waking moment in each other’s company. With no classes on until the end of January, it’s a lot of time.

When she changes the radio station to an indie band with a name he can’t pronounce he doesn’t change it back. They bicker about it for two of the band’s songs before he gives in and lets her listen to the third in peace. _Then_ he changes it back. It’s uncanny really, the way he acts around her. Not that he’ll admit to that in front of her—or anyone for that matter. He doesn’t get it. How he likes that she has to sleep on the right side of the bed, and is transfixed about how she puts the toothpaste on the brush before the water. Michael is somehow oddly fascinated by her lesser known characteristics but—he doesn’t have to get it. 

Instead he gets a sticky-sweet lipgloss kiss on his cheek when they arrive; a mile-wide smile and his day gets exponentially better. 

It’s barely 40 degrees outside and Michael sighs; heavy and thick. His breath comes out in a white puff of air in front of him. The pitched roof of the house has a thin sheet of sleet covering it and frost tips the grass, crunching underfoot as he walks up to the porch. Sarah’s small hand tucks into his, right before his foot hits the first step. 

They both know he’s running the risk of bringing someone up to the house on the cape without anyone’s knowing, “ _But fuck it,_ ” was what he said when she brought it up on the way there. He didn’t miss the way she smirked when he said that either.

The temperature inside is only slightly warmed than outside, so Michael bumps the thermostat to 70 while Sarah flicks on the lights. He directs her to his room with their bags; one on the ground floor overlooking the cape through floor-to-ceiling French windows. Before he can tell her not to, she opens the door to the balcony extending from his room. Gale-force winds roll through the half-open door but she steps out onto the full-uncovered terrace anyway. 

He follows—of _course_ he does—and wraps his arms around her from behind. They both stand in the bitter cold wind for an indefinite time; their hands both finding their way into her jumper pockets—his head nestled in the crook of her neck. Sarah’s hair billows around them wildly, uncontrollably, defiantly and they watch with wide eyes and salty skin as the waves wash against the rock formation ahead of them; receding, recoiling and crashing again and again. 

Maybe he won’t stay with her forever—maybe they’re only temporary—and maybe there will be a day when they don’t spark each other anymore. But also, maybe _maybe_ they aren’t as different as he thought.

###

Messages: With:  **L(oser)uke [(310) 426...]**

(11:07 am)  **_where u at???_ **

(11:08 am)  **_bro_ **

(11:08 am)  **_no one’s heard from you in like three days_ **

(11:10 am)  **_is ur phone off???_ **

(11:14 am)  **_where r u???_ **

(11:43 am)  **_ellise says sarahs gone too_ **

(11:43 am)  **_she didn’t kidnap u did she???_ **

(11:43 am)  **_that seems like something she’d do_ **

(11:44 am)  **_she can b hostile like that_ **

(11:56 am)  **_like that one time she made me give her my coffee or threatened to tell ellise about_ **

(11:57 am)  **_wait_ **

(11:57 am)  **_can’t tell u_ **

(11:57 am)  **_you’ll use it to blackmail me too_ **

(11:58 am)  **_ANYWAY_ **


End file.
